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Letters from The Raven 



Letters from The Raven 

BEING THE CORRESPONDENCE OF 

Lafcadio Hearn with 
Henry Watkin 

WITH INTRODUCTION AND 

CRITICAL COMMENT BY THE EDITOR 

MILTON BRONNER 






NEW YORK 

Brentano's 
1907 



COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY BRENTANO S 



lew* 



jllBRARYof CON»G*FSS~ 
I two Cooler Received 

OCT §1 I90f 

jConynehf Entrv 
Uutf2M, /4*7 

CLASS.4 XXc, No. 

GO FY &. 



D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 



To 

My Sweethearts Three 

Marian, May 

and 

Motherkin 



Contents 

INTRODUCTION 9 

LETTERS FROM THE RAVEN 21 

LETTERS TO A LADY 1 1 3 

LETTERS OF OZIAS MIDWINTER I 5 5 



Introduction 



Introduction 

IT is felt that no apology is necessary for offer- 
ing to the interested public, even though it be 
a limited one, the letters and extracts from let- 
ters which appear in this little volume. In a day 
when the letters of Aubrey Beardsley — who was 
a draughtsman rather than a writer — are gravely 
offered to possible readers by a great publishing 
house, it is surely allowable to present for the first 
time epistles of a really great author. No excuse 
was offered for printing such things as: "Thank 
you so much. It was very good of you to call." 
If this tells us anything concerning the unfortu- 
nate young master of white and black, I am un- 
able to discern it. I feel quite sure that no one can 
make the same objection to the correspondence 
herewith given. It tells us many things concern- 
ing Hearn's life and moods and aspirations that 
otherwise would have been unknown to us. He 
wrote to Mr. Henry Watkin as to his dearest 
friend. In his letters, we get what we do not find 
elsewhere. We have here facts without which his 
future biographer would be at a loss. 

If there be any repetitions in the sections which 
follow, the indulgence of the reader is craved. Such 



10 



Introduction 



as they are, they were written at widely separated 
intervals in the hope that material might be fi- 
nally gathered for a "Life and Letters of Hearn." 
This hope has so far been frustrated, but it is felt 
that much is here offered that will lead to a better 
understanding and appreciation of this famous 
writer. The endeavor of the editor has been so 
far as possible to let Hearn tell his own story, 
giving only enough comment to make clear what 
Hearn himself had to say. 

In writing of their beloved R. L. S., enthu- 
siasts tell us Stevenson is endeared to mankind 
not only because of his writings, but also because 
of his dauntless cheerfulness in the face of in- 
curable disease. Hearn, in another field, was 
equally charming in his work and, in the face of 
another danger, equally dauntless. From the first 
he was confronted by the possible fate of the 
sightless. At best he had but a pearly vision of 
the world. The mere labor of writing was a physi- 
cal task with him, demanding hours for the com- 
position of a single letter. Yet he accomplished 
almost two score volumes, none of which is 
carelessly written. Seeing as through a ghostly 
vapor, in his books he revelled in color as few 
writers of our day have been able to do. How he 



Introduction u 

managed to see, or rather to comprehend, all the 
things he so vividly described, was one of his 
secrets. 

The best work of his life was commenced at 
the age of forty, when he arrived in Japan. He 
had many qualifications for his chosen field. 
During the long, lazy two years in Martinique he 
had literally soaked his mind, as it were, with 
Oriental philosophy. When he came to Japan he 
was weary of wandering, and the courtesy, gentle- 
ness and kindliness of the natives soon convinced 
him that they were the best people in the world 
among whom to live. A small man physically, 
he felt at home in a nation of small men. It 
pleased his shy, sensitive nature to think that he 
was often mistaken for a Japanese. 

To his studies and his work he brought a pro- 
digious curiosity, a perfect sympathy, and an ad- 
mirable style. He had an eye that observed every- 
thing in this delightful Nippon, from the manner 
in which the women threaded their needles to the 
effect of Shinto and Buddhism upon the national 
character, religion, art, and literature. Japanese 
folk-lore, Japanese street songs and sayings, the 
home life of the people, — everything appealed to 
him, and the farther removed from modern days 



12 



Introduction 



and from Christianity, the stronger the appeal. 

Zangwill has acutely said, in speaking of Loti's 
famous story of Japan, "Instead of looking for 
the soul of a people, Pierre Loti was simply look- 
ing for a woman." 

Hearn did not fail to tell us of many women, 
but his most particular search was for just that 
soul of a people which Loti ignored; and in the 
hunt for that soul, he became more and more 
impressed by that Buddhism which enabled him 
the better to comprehend the people. His whole 
religious life had been a wandering away from the 
Christianity to which he was born and a finding 
of a faith compounded of Buddhism modified 
by paganism, and a leaven of the scientific be- 
liefs of agnostics such as Spencer and Huxley, 
whom he never wearied of reading and quoting. 
In all his writings this tendency is displayed. In 
one of the letters we see him an avowed agnostic, 
or perhaps "pantheist" would be the better 
word. In his little-known story of 1889, pub- 
lished in Lippincotfs, with the Buddhist title of 
" Karma," there is a curious tribute to a fair, pure 
woman. It shows the hold the theory of heredity 
and evolution and the belief in reincarnation al- 
ready had upon him : 



Introdu&ion 13 

"In her beauty is the resurrection of the fair- 
est past; — in her youth, the perfection of the 
present; — in her girl dreams, the promise of the 
To-Be. ... A million lives have been consumed 
that hers should be made admirable; countless 
minds have planned and toiled and agonized that 
thought might reach a higher and purer power in 
her delicate brain; — countless hearts have been 
burned out by suffering that hers might pulse for 
joy ; — innumerable eyes have lost their light that 
hers might be filled with witchery ; — innumerable 
lips have prayed that hers might be kissed." 

On his first day in the Orient he visited a tem- 
ple and made an offering, recording the follow- 
ing conversation, which gives an admirable in- 
sight into his religious beliefs:* 

"'Are you a Christian?' 

"And I answered truthfully/ No.' 

" f Are you a Buddhist?' 

"'Not exactly.' 

"'Why do you make offerings if you do not 
believe in Buddha?' 

"'I revere the beauty of his teaching, and the 
faith of those who follow it.'" 

*This and several other extracts are from that delightful 
book, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



14 Introduction 

From this by degrees he reached to a pure Bud- 
dhism, tempered, however, by a strange, romantic 
half belief, half love for the old pagan gods, feel- 
ing himself at heart a pagan, too: 

" For these quaint Gods of Roads and Gods 
of Earth are really living still, though so worn and 
mossed and feebly worshipped. In this brief mo- 
ment, at least, I am really in the Elder World, 
— perhaps just at that epoch of it when the pri- 
mal faith is growing a little old-fashioned, crum- 
bling slowly before the corrosive influence of a 
new philosophy; and I know myself a pagan still, 
loving these simple old gods, these gods of a peo- 
ple's childhood. And they need some love, these 
naif, innocent, ugly gods. The beautiful divini- 
ties will live forever by that sweetness of woman- 
hood idealized in the Buddhist art of them: eter- 
nal are Kwannon and Benten; they need no help 
ofman ;they will compel reverence when the great 
temples shall all have become voiceless andpriest- 
less as this shrine of Koshin is. But these kind, 
queer, artless, mouldering gods, who have given 
ease to so many troubled minds, who have glad- 
dened so many simple hearts, who have heard 
so many innocent prayers, — how gladly would 
I prolong their beneficent lives in spite of the so- 



Introduction 15 

called 'laws of progress' and the irrefutable phi- 
losophy of evolution. " 

It is the combination of the various beliefs 
here shadowed that explains the unique note he 
brought into our literature. The man who was at 
once a follower of Spencer and of Buddha, with a 
large sympathy for the old folk-religion, brought 
forth an embodied thought entirely new to the 
world. Nothing like it had ever been produced 
before. Its like may never be produced again. He 
endeavored to reconcile the evolutional theory 
of inherited tendencies with the Buddhist be- 
lief in reincarnation, — one lengthening chain of 
lives, — and with the worship of the dead as seen 
in pure Shinto, for "is not every action indeed 
the work of the Dead who dwell within us?" 

It was this queer combination that gave a 
strange charm, a moving magic, to various pas- 
sages in his books. For the rest, his work and 
method of labor, may best be described in his 
own words when speaking of Japanese artists. 
He writes: 

"The foreign artist will give you realistic re- 
flections of what he sees; but he will give you no- 
thing more. The Japanese artist gives you that 
which he feels, — the mood of a season, the pre- 



16 Introduction 

cise sensation of an hour and place; his work is 
qualified by a power ofsuggestiveness rarely found 
in the art of the West. The Occidental painter 
renders minute detail; he satisfies the imagination 
he evokes. But his Oriental brother either sup- 
presses or idealizes detail, — steeps his distances 
in mist, bands his landscapes with cloud, makes 
of his experience a memory in which only the 
strange and the beautiful survive, with their sensa- 
tions. He surpasses imagination, excites it, leaves 
it hungry with the hunger of charm perceived in 
glimpses only. Nevertheless in such glimpses he 
is able to convey the feeling of a time, the char- 
acter of a place, after a fashion that seems magi- 
cal. He is a painter of recollections and sensa- 
tions rather than of clear-cut realities; and in this 
lies the secret of his amazing power." 

It has often been asked, "These books are 
beautiful as prose, but do they give us Japan?" 
Some have said he saw Japan with the eyes of a 
lover and was thus deceived. Captain F. Brink- 
ley, an authority on Oriental matters and for years 
editor of the most important English paper in 
the Orient, has expressed, to the present writer, 
his skepticism concerning the entire verity of 
some of Hearts pictures. On the other hand, 



Introduction 17 

here is what two Japanese writers say : Mr. Yone 
Noguchi, himself a poet of no mean abilities, 
writes of Hearn:" I like to vindicate Hearn from 
the criticism that his writing is about one third 
Japanese and two thirds Hearn. Fortunately his 
two thirds Hearn is also Japanese." 

This is heartily seconded by Mr. Adachi Kin- 
nosuke: "So truly did he write of us and of our 
land, that the West, which is always delighted to 
fall in love with counterfeits in preference to the 
genuine, did not believe him ; made merry at his 
expense, told him that he was a dreamer, that 
his accounts were too rose-colored. We of the 
soil only marvelled. Of him we have said that he 
is more of Nippon than ourselves." 

No fitter close to this introduction may be 
given than Noguchi's prose elegy sent to Ame- 
rica from Tokio several days after Hearn's in- 
terment: 

"Truly he was a delicate, easily broken Japa- 
nese vase, old as the world, beautiful as a cherry 
blossom. Alas ! that wonderful vase was broken. 
He is no more with us. Surely we could better 
lose two or three battle-ships at Port Arthur than 
Lafcadio Hearn." 



Letters from The Raven 



Letters from The Raven 

TAKE up any book written by Lafcadio 
Hearn concerning Japan, and you will find 
the most delicate interpretation of the life of the 
people, their religion, their folk-songs, their cus- 
toms, expressed in English that it is a delight 
to read. Upon further examination you will no- 
tice the calm, the serenity, the self-poise of the 
writer. It is as though, miraculously finding utter- 
ance, he were one of those stone Buddhas erected 
along the Japanese highways. He seems to have 
every attribute of a great writer save humor. There 
is hardly a smile in any of his books on Japan. 
One would say that the author was a man who 
never knew what gaiety was. One would judge 
that his life had lain in quiet places always, with- 
out any singular sorrow or suffering, without any 
struggle for existence. Judged by what Hearn 
told the world at large, the impression would be 
a correct one. 

He was shy by nature. He did not take the 
world into his confidence. Hewas not one to harp 
on his own troubles and ask the world to sym- 
pathize with him. The world had dealt him some 
very hard blows,- — blows which hurt sorely, — 



22 



Letters from The Raven 



and so, while he gave the public his books, he kept 
himself to himself. He transferred the aroma of 
Japan to his writings. He did not sell the reader 
snap-shots of his own personality. jTo one man 
only perhaps in the whole world did the little 
Greek-Irishman reveal his inner thoughts, and he 
was one who thirty-eight years ago opened his heart 
and his home to the travel-stained, poverty-bur- 
dened lad of nineteen, who had run away from a 
monastery in Wales and who still had part of his 
monk's garb for clothing when he reached America. 

Hearn never discussed his family affairs very 
extensively, but made it clear that his father was a 
surgeon in the crack Seventy-sixth Regiment of 
British Infantry, and his mother a Greek woman 
of Cherigo in the Ionian Islands. The social cir- 
cle to which his father belonged frowned on the 
misalliance, and when the wife and children arrived 
in England, after the father's death, the aristo- 
cratic relatives soon made the strangers feel that 
they were anything but welcome. 

The young Lafcadio was chosen for the priest- 
hood, and after receiving his education partly in 
France and partly in England, he was sent to a 
monastery in Wales. As he related afterwards, he 
was in bad odor there from the first. Even as a 



Letters from The Raven 23 

boy he had the skeptical notions about things re- 
ligious that were to abide with him for long years 
after and change him to an ardent materialist un- 
til he fell under the influence of Buddhism. One 
day, after a dispute with the priests, and in disgust 
with the course in life that had been mapped out 
for him, the boy took what money he could get 
and made off to America. After sundry adven- 
tures, concerning which he was always silent, he 
arrived in Cincinnati in 1869, hungry, tired, un- 
kempt, — a boy without a trade, without friends, 
without money. In some way he made the ac- 
quaintance of a Scotch printer, and this man in 
turn introduced him to Henry Watkin, an Eng- 
lishman, largely self-educated, of broad culture 
and wide reading, of singular liberality of views, 
and a lover of his kind. Watkin at this time ran 
a printing shop. 

Left alone with the lad, who had come across 
the seas to be as far away as possible from his fa- 
ther's people, the man of forty-five surveyed the 
boy of nineteen and said," Well, my young man, 
how do you expect to earn a living?" 

"I don't know." 

"Have you any trade?" 

"No, sir." 



24 Letters from The Raven 

"Can you do anything at all?" 

" Yes, sir; I might write," was the eager reply. 

"Umph!" said Watkin; "better learn some 
bread-winning trade and put off writing until 
later." 

After this Hearn was installed as errand boy 
and helper. He was not goodly to look upon. His 
body was unusually puny and under-sized. The 
softness of his tread had something feline and 
feminine in it. His head, covered with long black 
hair, was full and intellectual, save for two de- 
fects, a weak chin and an eye of the variety known 
as "pearl," — large and white and bulbous, so that 
it repelled people upon a first acquaintance. 

Hearn felt deeply the effect his shyness, his 
puny body, and his unsightly eye had upon peo- 
ple, and this feeling served to make him even 
more diffident and more melancholy than he was 
by nature. However, as with many melancholy- 
natured souls, he had an element of fun in him, 
which came out afterwards upon his longer ac- 
quaintance with the first man who had given him 
a helping hand. 

Hearn swept the floor of the printing shop 
and tried to learn the printer's craft, but failed, 
He slept in a little room back of the shop and 



Letters from The Raven 25 

ate his meals in the place with Mr. Watkin. He 
availed himself of his benefactor's library, and read 
Poe and volumes on free thought, delighted to 
find a kindred spirit in the older man. Together 
they often crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky 
to hear lectures on spiritualism and laugh about 
them. Their companionship was not broken when 
Mr. Watkin secured for the boy a position with 
a Captain Barney, who edited and published a 
commercial paper, for which Hearn solicited ad- 
vertisements and to which he began also to con- 
tribute articles. One of these — a singular com- 
position for such a paper — was a proposal to 
cross the Atlantic in a balloon anchored to a 
floating buoy. It was later in the year that he 
secured a position as a reporter on the Enquirer, 
through some "feature" articles he shyly depos- 
ited upon the editor's desk, making his escape 
before the great man had caught him in the act. 
It was not long before the latent talent in the 
youth began to make itself manifest. He was not 
a rapid writer. On the contrary, he was exceed- 
ingly slow, but his product was written in English 
that no reporter then working in Cincinnati ap- 
proached. His fellow reporters soon became jeal- 
ous of him. They were, moreover, repelled by his 



26 Letters from The Raven 

personal appearance and chilled by his steady re- 
fusal to see the fun of getting drunk. Finding lack 
of congeniality among the young men of his own 
age and occupation, among whom he was to work 
for seven more years, his friendship with Mr. 
Watkin became all the stronger, so that he came 
to look upon the latter as the one person in Cin- 
cinnati upon whom he could count for unselfish 
companionship and sincere advice. Hearn's Cin- 
cinnati experiences ended with his service on the 
Enquirer. Before that he had been proofreader 
to a publishing house and secretary to Cincin- 
nati's public librarian. He was also for a time on 
the staff of the Commercial. It was while on the 
Enquirer that he accomplished several journa- 
listic feats that are still referred to in gatherings 
of oldtime newspaper men of Cincinnati. One 
was a grisly description of the charred body of 
a murdered man, the screed being evidently in- 
spired by recollections of Poe. The other was an 
article describing Cincinnati as seen from the top 
of a high church steeple, the joke of it being that 
Hearn, by reason of his defective vision, could 
see nothing even after he had made his perilous 
climb. It was in the last days of his stay in Cin- 
cinnati that he, with H. F. Farny, the painter, 



Letters from The Raven 27 

issued a short-lived weekly known as Giglampz. 
Farny, not yet famous as an Indian painter, con- 
tributed the drawings, and Hearn the bulk of 
the letter press for the journal, which modestly 
announced that it was going to eclipse Punch 
and all the other famous comic weeklies. Hearn, 
always sensitive,- practically withdrew from the 
magazine when Farny took the very excusable 
liberty of changing the title of one of the essays 
of the former. Farny thought the title offen- 
sive to people of good taste, and said so. Hearn 
apparently acquiesced, but brooded over the 
"slight," and never again contributed to the 
weekly. Shortly afterwards it died. It is doubt- 
ful whether there are any copies in existence. 
Many Cincinnati collectors have made rounds 
of the second-hand book-shops in a vain search 
for stray numbers. 

Early in their acquaintance Watkin and 
Hearn called each other by endearing names 
which were adhered to throughout the long years 
of their correspondence. Mr. Watkin, with his 
leonine head, was familiarly addressed as "Old 
Man " or " Dad ; " while the boy, by virtue of his 
dark hair and coloring, the gloomy cast of his 
thoughts, and his deep love for Poe, was known 



28 Letters from The Raven 

as "The Raven/' a name which caught his fancy. 
Indeed, a simple little drawing of the bird stood 
for many years in place of a signature to anything 
he chanced to write to Mr. Watkin. In spite of 
their varying lines of work, the two were often 
together. When "The Raven" was prowling the 
city for news, he was often accompanied by his 
"Dad." Not infrequently, when the younger man 
had no especial task, he would come to Mr. Wat- 
kin's office and read some books there. One of 
these, whose title and author Mr. Watkin has 
forgotten, fascinated at the same time that it re- 
pelled Hearn by its grim and ghastly stories of 
battle, murder, and sudden death. One night Mr. 
Watkin left him reading in the office. When he 
opened the place the next morning he found this 
note from Hearn: 

"10 p.m. These stories are positively so hor- 
rible that even a materialist feels rather unplea- 
santly situated when left alone with the thoughts 
conjured up by this dreamer of fantastic dreams. 
The brain-chambers of fancy become thronged 
with goblins. I think I shall go home." 

For. signature there was appended a very black 
and a very thoughtful-looking raven. 

It was also in these days that Hearn indulged 



Letters from The Raven 29 

in his little pleasantries with Mr. Watkin. Hardly 
a day passed without a visit to the printing office. 
When he did not find his friend, he usually left 
a card for him, on which was some little drawing, 




A PENCIL SKETCH BY HEARN LEFT AT MR. WATKIN S 
SHOP AT THE BEGINNING OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP 

Hearn having quite a talent in this direction, — 
a talent that he never afterward developed. Of 
course some of the cards were just as nonsen- 
sical as the nonsense verses friends often write 
to each other. They are merely quoted to show 
Hearn's fund of animal spirits at the time. 

Mr. Watkin one day left a card forpossible cus- 
tomers : " Gone to supper. H. W." Hearn passed 
by and wrote on the opposite side of the card: 
"Gone to get my sable plumage plucked. " The 
inevitable raven followed as signature. It was 



30 Letters from The Raven 

Hearn's way of saying he had come to see Mr. 
Watkin and had then gone to a barber shop to 
have his hair cut. Once he omitted the raven and 
signed his note, "Kaw." 



FACSIMILE OF ONE OF THE CARDS HEARN LEFT AT 
MR. WATKIN'S SHOP 

On another occasion when Mr. Watkin came 
to the office he found a note informing him that 
he was "a flabbergasted ichthyosaurus and an 
antediluvian alligator" for not being on hand. 

The influence of Poe was strong upon him 
even in this nonsense. Hearn waited for his friend 
one night until a late hour. The shop was quite 
lonely, as it was the only open one in a big build- 
ing on a more or less deserted street. The quiet 
became oppressive, and the little man left because 
"these chambers are cursed with the Curse of 
Silence. And the night, which is the Shadow of 
God, waneth." 



Letters from The Raven 31 

Mr. Watkin had a dog. Hearn did not like 
the animal, and it seemed to reciprocate the feel- 
ing. One of Hearn's notes was largely devoted 
to the little beast. When he so chose Hearn could 
make a fairly good drawing. This particular note 
was adorned with rude piclures of an animal sup- 
posed to be a dog. The teeth were made the most 
prominent feature. The pictures were purposely 
made in a childish style, and used for the word 
"dog." 

"Dear Nasty Cross Old Man! 

"I tried to find you last night. 

"You were not in apparently. 

" I shook the door long and violently, and lis- 
tened. 

" I did not hear the [dog] bark. 

"Perhaps you were not aware that the night 
you got so infernally mad I slipped a cooked beef- 
steak strongly seasoned with Strychnine under 
the door. 

"I was glad that the [dog] did not bark. 

"I susped: the [dog] will not bark any more! 

" I think the [dog] must have gone to that 
Bourne from which no traveller returneth. 

"I hope the [dog] is dead." 






32 Letters from The Raven 

The note is signed with the usual drawing of 
a raven. On still another occasion he wrote the 
following farrago : 

"I came to see you— to thank you — to re- 
monstrate with you — to demonstrate matters syl- 
logistically and phlebotomically. Gone! ! ! Then 
I departed, wandering among the tombs of Me- 
mory, where the Ghouls of the Present gnaw the 
black bones of the Past. Then I returned and 
crept to the door and listened to see if I could 
hear the beating of your hideous heart." 

These little notes are not presented here for 
any intrinsic merit; they are given simply to 
show how different was the real Hearn from the 
shy, silent, uncommunicative, grave, little re- 
porter. 

His notes were but precursors to the letters in 
which he was most truly to reveal himself. Unlike 
the epistles of great writers that so frequently 
find theirway into print, Hearn's letters were not 
written with an eye to publication. They were 
written solely for the interest of their recipient. 
They were in the highest form of the true letter, 
—written talks with the favorite friend, couched 
usually in the best language the writer knew how 
to employ. They tell their own story, — the only 



Letters from The Raven 33 

story of Hearn's life, — a story often of hopeless 
search for bread-winning work; of bitter glooms 
and hysterical pleasures; of deep enjoyment of 
Louisiana autumns and West Indian and Japa- 
nese scenes; of savage hatred of Cincinnati and 
New Orleans, the two American cities in which 
he had worked as a newspaper man and in which 
he had been made to realize that he had many 
enemies and but few friends. Everything is told 
in these letters to Mr. Watkin, to whom he 
poured out his thoughts and feelings without re- 
serve. Hearn's first step towards bettering him- 
self followed when he became weary of the 
drudgery of work on the Cincinnati papers, and 
decided, after much discussion with Mr. Watkin, 
to resign his position and go South, the Crescent 
City being his objective point. 

It was in October, 1877, that Hearn set out 
from Cincinnati on his way to New Orleans, 
going by rail to Memphis, whence he took the 
steamboat Thompson Dean down the Mississippi 
River to his destination. While in Memphis, im- 
patiently waiting for his steamer to arrive, and 
afterwards in New Orleans, Hearn kept himself 
in touch with his friend in Cincinnati by means 
of a series of messages hastily scribbled on postal 



34 Letters from The Raven 

cards. Many of these reflected the animal spirits 
of the young man of twenty-seven, who had still 
preserved a goodly quantity of his boyishness, 
though he felt, as he said, as old as the moon. 
But not all of the little messages were gay. The 
tendency to despondency and morbidity, which 
had partially led Mr. Watkin to dub Hearn 
"The Raven," now showed itself. The first of 
these cards, which Mr. Watkin has preserved, 
was sent from Memphis on October 28, 1 877. It 
bears two drawings of a raven. In one the eyes 
are very thoughtful. The raven is scratching its 
head with its claws, and below is the legend, "In 
a dilemma at Memphis. " The other raven is 
merely labelled, " Remorseful ." The next was sent 
on October 29. Hearn had begun to worry. He 
wrote: 

"Dear O. M. [Old Man]: Did not stop at 
Louisville. Could n't find out -anything about 
train. Am stuck at Memphis for a week waiting 
for a boat. Getting d — d poor. New Orleans far 
off. Five hundred miles to Vicksburg. Board two 
dollars per day. Trouble and confusion. Flabber- 
gasted. Mixed up. Knocked into a cocked hat." 

The raven, used as the signature, wears a trou 



Letters from The Raven 35 

bled countenance. On the same day, perhaps in 
the evening, Hearn sent still another card: 

"DearO.M.: Have succeeded with enormous 
difficulty in securing accommodations at one dol- 
lar per diem, including a bed in a haunted room. 
Very blue. Here is the mosquito of these parts, 
natural size. [Hearn gives a vivid pencil drawing 
of one, two thirds of an inch long.] I spend my 
nights in making war upon him and my days in 
watching the murmuring current of the Missis- 
sippi and the most wonderful sunsets on the Ar- 
kansaw side that I ever saw. Don't think I should 
like to swim the Mississippi at this point. Per- 
haps the Bean may be here on Wednesday. I 
don't like Memphis at all, but cannot express 
my opinion in a postal card. They have a pretty 
fountain here — much better than that old brass 
candlestick in Cincinnati." 

The next postal card was mailed on Oclober 30, 
and contains one of the cleverest drawings of the 
series. Hearn says: "It has been raining all day, 
and I have had nothing to do but look at it. 
Half wish was back in Cincinnati." 

Then follows a rude sketch of part of the Ohio 
River and its confluence with the Mississippi. A 



36 Letters from The Raven 

huddle of buildings represents Cincinnati. An- 
other huddle represents Memphis. There stands 
the raven, his eyes bulging out of his head, look- 
ing at some object in the distance. The object is a 
huge snail which is leaving New Orleans and is 
labelled the 'Thompson Dean. 

One of the finest of all the letters he wrote to 
Mr. Watkin was from Memphis. It is dated Oc- 
tober 31, 1877. In this he made a prediction 
which afterwards came literally true. He seemed 
to foresee that, while in his loneliness he would 
write often to Mr. Watkin, once he became en- 
grossed in his work and saw new sights and new 
faces, his letters would be written at greater inter- 
vals. 

" Dear Old Dad : I am writing in a great big, 
dreary room of this great, dreary house. It over- 
looks the Mississippi. I hear the puffing and the 
panting of the cotton boats and the deep calls 
of the river traffic; but I neither hear nor see the 
Thompson Dean. She will not be here this week, 
I am afraid, as she only left New Orleans to-day. 

£<r My room is carpetless and much larger than 
your office. Old blocked-up stairways come up 
here and there through the floor or down through 



fft 




Letters from The Raven 37 

the ceiling, and they suddenly disappear. There 
is a great red daub on one wall as though made 
by a bloody hand when somebody was stagger- 
ing down the stairway. There are only a few panes 
of glass in the windows. I am the first tenant of 
the room for fifteen years. Spiders are busy spin- 
ning their dusty tapestries in every corner, and 
between the bannisters of the old stairways. The 
planks of the floor are sprung, and when I walk 
along the room at night it sounds as though 
Something or Somebody was following me in the 
dark. And then being in the third story makes 
it much more ghostly. 

"I had hard work to get awashstand and towel 
put in this great, dreary room; for the landlord 
had not washed his face for more than a quarter 
of a century, and regarded washing as an expen- 
sive luxury. At last I succeeded with the assist- 
ance of the barkeeper, who has taken a liking to 
me. 

"Perhaps you have seen by the paper that 
General N. B. Forrest died here night before last. 
To-day they are burying him. I see troops of men 
in grey uniforms parading the streets,and the busi- 
ness of the city is suspended in honor of the dead. 
And they are firing weary, dreary minute guns. 



38 Letters from The Raven 

"I am terribly tired of this dirty, dusty, ugly 
town,- — a city only forty years old, but looking 
old as the ragged, fissured bluffs on which it 
stands. It is full of great houses, which were once 
grand, but are now as waste and dreary within and 
without as the huge building in which I am lodg- 
ing for the sum of twenty-five cents a night. I am 
obliged to leave my things in the barkeeper's 
care at night for fear of their being stolen ; and he 
thinks me a little reckless because I sleep with 
my money under my pillow. You see the doors 
of my room — there are three of them — lock 
badly. . . . They are ringing those dead bells every 
moment, — it is a very unpleasant sound. I sup- 
pose you will not laugh if I tell you that I have 
been crying a good deal of nights, — just like I 
used to do when a college boy returned from va- 
cation. It is a lonely feeling, this of finding one- 
self alone in a strange city, where you never meet 
a face that you know; and when all the faces you 
did know seem to have been dead faces, disap- 
peared for an indefinite time. I have not travelled 
enough the last eight years, I suppose: it does 
not do to become attached insensibly to places 
and persons. ... I suppose you have had some 
postal cards from me; and you are beginning to 



■; 



Letters from The Raven 39 

think I am writing quite often. I suppose I am, 
and you know the reason why; and perhaps you 
are thinking to yourself: 'He feels a little blue 
now, and is accordingly very affectionate, &c; 
but by and by he will be quite forgetful, and per- 
haps will not write so often as at present/ 

"Well, I suppose you are right. I live in and 
by extremes and am on an extreme now. I write 
extremely often, because I feel alone and ex- 
tremely alone. By and by, if I get well, I shall 
write only by weeks; and with time perhaps only 
by months; and when at last comes the rush 
of business and busy newspaper work, only by 
years, — until the times and places of old friend- 
ship are forgotten, and old faces have become 
dim as dreams, and these little spider-threads of 
attachments will finally yield to the long strain 
of a thousand miles." 

A postal card of November 3 says: "Will leave 
Memphis Tuesday next, perhaps. Am begin- 
ning to doubt the existence of the 'Thompson 
Dean" November 13, 1877, finds Hearn over- 
joyed to be in New Orleans. The postal card 
bears in the left-hand corner a drawing of a door 
labelled "228." In a window at the side of the 



40 Letters from The Raven 

door sits the raven. On the other side is the le- 
gend: 

Raven liveth at 

228 Baronne St. 

New Orleans 
Care Mrs. Bustellos 

Then comes another raven, with the doggerel: 
Indite him an epistle. 
Dont give him particular H — . 

And finally the remarks: 

Pretty Louisiana! Nice Louisiana! 

Hearn began to send letters to one of the Cincin- 
nati papers, but was soon in a terrible plight, as 
his postal card of December 9 demonstrates: 

"lam in a very desperate fix here, — having no 
credit. If you can help me a little within the next 
few days, please try. I fear I must ask you to ask 
Davie to sell all my books except the French 
ones. The need of money has placed me in so 
humiliating a position that I cannot play the part 
of correspondent any longer. The Commercial has 
not sent me anything, and I cannot even get 
stamps. I landed in New Orleans with a frac- 
tion over twenty dollars, which I paid out in ad- 
vance." 



Letters from The Raven 41 

Mr. Watkin was unable to make the reply he 
desired, and was even prevented by other mat- 
ters from answering in any way until weeks later. 
It was this silence which caused Hearn to mail 
a postal card, on January 13, 1878, which con- 
tained one of his cleverest drawings. In the back- 
ground is shown the sky with a crescent moon. 
In the foreground, upright from a grass-grown 
grave, stands a tombstone, bearing the inscrip- 
tion: 

h. w. 

DIED 

NOV. 29 

1877 

Perched on top of the stone is a particularly rag- 
ged and particularly black raven. It was the last 
gleam of fun that was to come from him for some 
time. He was to experience some of the bitter- 
est moments of his life, moments which explained 
his hatred of New Orleans, as the slanders of 
the newspapermen of Cincinnati embittered him 
against that city. 

The following seems to be the first, or one of 
the first, letters written by him after his arrival in 
New Orleans. As usual, it is undated: 



42 



Letters from The Raven 



"Dear Old Friend: I cannot say how glad 
1 was to hear from you. J did not — unfortunately 
— get your letter at Memphis; it would have 




DRAWING ON A POSTAL CARD SENT TO WATKIN TO 
REMIND HIM HE HAD NOT WRITTEN 



cheered me up. I am slowly, very slowly, getting 
better. 

"The wealth of a world is here, — unworked 
gold in the ore, one might say; the paradise of 
the South is here, deserted and half in ruins. I 
never beheld anything so beautiful and so sad. 
When I saw it first — sunrise over Louisiana — 
the tears sprang to my eyes. It was like young 
death, — a dead bride crowned with orange flow- 



Letters from The Raven 43 

ers, — a dead face that asked for a kiss. I cannot say 
how fair and rich and beautiful this dead South 
is. It has fascinated me. I have resolved to live 
in it; I could not leave it for that chill and damp 
Northern life again. Yes ; I think you could make 
it pay to come here. One can do much here with 
very little capital. The great thing is, of course, 
the sugar-cane business. Everybody who goes 
into it almost does well. Some make half a million 
a year at it. The capital required to build a sugar 
mill, &c, is of course enormous; but men often 
begin with a few acres and become well-to-do in 
a few years. Louisiana thirsts for emigrants as a 
dry land for water. I was thinking of writing to 
tell you that I 'think you could do something in 
the way of the fruit business to make it worth 
your while to come down, — oranges, bananas, and 
tropical plants sell here at fabulously low prices. 
Bananas are of course perishable freight when 
ripe; but oranges are not, and I hear they sell at 
fifty cents a hundred, and even less than that a 
short distance from the city. So there are many 
other things here one could speculate in. I think 
with one partner North and one South, a firm 
could make money in the fruit business here. But 
there, you know I don't know anything about 



44 Letters from The Raven 

business. What's the good of asking me about 
business ? 

"If you come here, you can live for almost no- 
thing. Food is ridiculously cheap, — that is, cheap 
food. Then there are first-class restaurants here. 




FACSIMILE OF ENVELOPE ADDRESSED TO MR. WATKIN 
pY HEARN 

where the charge is three dollars for dinner. But 
board and lodging is very cheap. . . . 

" I have written twice to the Commerical, but 
have only seen one of my letters, — the Forrest 
letter. I have a copy. I fear the other letters will 
not be published. Too enthusiastic, you know. 
But I could not write coolly about beautiful Lou- 
isiana. . . . 

"Oh, you must come to New Orleans some- 



Letters from The Raven 45 

time, — no nasty chill, no coughs and cold. The 
healthiest climate in the world. Eternal summer. 

" It is damp at nights however, and fires are lit 
of evenings to dry the rooms. You know the land 
is marshy. Even the dead areunburied, — they are 
only vaulted up. The cemeteries are vaults, not 
graveyards. Only the Jews bury their dead; and 
their dead are buried in water. It is water three — 
yes, two — feet underground. 

"I like the people, especially the French; but 
of course I might yet have reason to change my 
opinion. . . . 

"Would you be surprised to hear that I have 
been visiting my uncle? Would you be aston- 
ished to learn that I was on the verge of pov- 
erty ? No. Then, forsooth, I will be discreet. One 
can live here for twenty cents a day — what's the 
odds? . . . 

"Yours truly, 

"The Prodigal Son " 

On the reverse side of an application for a money 
order, Hearn wrote to Watkin in i878,somecon- 
siderable time after his arrival in New Orleans: 

"I see the Cincinnati Commercial once in a 
while, and do not find any difference in it. My 



46 Letters from The Raven 

departure affecleth its columns not at all. In 
sooth a man on a daily newspaper is as a grain 
of mustard seed. Hope I may do better in New 
Orleans. It is time for a fellow to get out of Cin- 
cinnati when they begin to call it the Paris of 
America. But there are some worse places than 
Cincinnati. There is Memphis, for example." 

At one period, early during his stay in New 
Orleans, when Hearn began to look back upon 
what he had accomplished, or rather had failed 
to accomplish, in his life, he sank into the depths 
of despair. As was his wont, he wrote from his 
heart to his sole friend, depending upon him not 
only for cheer, but for advice. Mr. Watkin re- 
fused to take this long letter seriously, teased 
him about it rather, and advised him not to go 
to England, but to remain here in this country 
and persist in one line of work. The Hearn let- 
ter, which follows, belongs to the month of Feb- 
ruary, 1878: 

"Dear Old Man: I shall be twenty-eight 
years old in a few days, — a very few days more; 
and I am frightened to think how few they are. 
I am afraid to look at the almanac to find out 
what day The Day falls upon, — it might fall 



Letters from The Raven 47 

upon a Friday, — and I can't shake off a super- 
stition about it, — a superstition always outlives 
a religion. Looking back at the file of these 
twenty-eight years, which grow more shadowy 
in receding, I can remember and distinguish the 
features of at least twenty. There is an alarming 
similarity of misery in all their faces; and how- 
ever misty the face, the outlines of misery are 
remarkably perceptible. Each, too, seems to be 
a record of similar events, — thwarting of will 
and desire in every natural way, ill success in 
every aim, denial of almost every special wish, 
compulsion to act upon the principle that every- 
thing agreeable was wrong and everything dis- 
agreeable right, unpleasant recognition of self- 
weakness and inability to win success by indi- 
vidual force, — not to mention enormous ad- 
denda in the line of novel and wholly unexpected 
disappointments. Somehow or other, whenever 
I succeeded in an undertaking, the fruit acquired 
seemed tasteless and vapid; but usually, when 
one step more would have been victory, some 
extraordinary and unanticipated obstacle rose up 
in impassability. I must acknowledge, however, 
that, as a general rule, the unexpected obstacle 
was usually erected by myself; — some loss of 



48 Letters from The Raven 

temper, impatience, extra-sensitiveness, betrayed 
and indulged instead of concealed, might be cred- 
ited with a large majority of failures. 

"Without a renovation of individuality, how- 
ever, I really can see no prospect, beyond the 
twenty-eighth year, of better years — the years 
seem to grow worse in regular succession. As to 
the renovation, — it is hardly possible: don't 
you think so? Sometimes I think small people 
without great wills and great energies have no 
business trying to do much in this wonderful 
country ; the successful men all appear to have 
gigantic shoulders and preponderant deport- 
ments. When I look into the private histories 
of the young men who achieved success in the 
special line I have been vainly endeavoring to 
follow to some termination, I find they generally 
hanged themselves or starved to death, while 
their publishers made enormous fortunes and 
world-wide reputations after their unfortunate 
and idealistic customers were dead. There were 
a few exceptions, but these exceptions were cases 
of extraordinary personal vigor and vital force. 
So while my whole nature urges me to continue 
as I have begun, I see nothing in prospect ex- 
cept starvation, sickness, artificial wants, which 



Letters from The Raven 49 

I shall never be wealthy enough to even par- 
tially gratify, and perhaps utter despair at the 
end. Then again, while I have not yet lost all 
confidence in myself, I feel strongly doubtful 
whether I shall ever have means or leisure to 
develop the latent (possible) ability within me 
to do something decently meritorious. Perhaps, 
had I not been constrained to ambition by neces- 
sity, I should never have had any such yearnings 
about the unattainable and iridescent bubbles of 
literary success. But that has nothing to do with 
the question. Such is the proposition now: how 
can I get out of hell when I have got halfway 
down to the bottom of it? Can I carry on any 
kind of business? I can fancy that I see you throw 
back your head and wag your beard with a hearty 
laugh at the mere idea, the preposterous idea! 

" Can I keep any single situation for any great 
length of time? You know I can't, — couldn't 
stand it; hate the mere idea of it, — something 
horribly disagreeable would be sure to happen. 
Then again, I can't even stay in one place for 
any healthy period of time. I can't stay any- 
where without getting in trouble. And my heart 
always feels like a bird, fluttering impatiently for 
the migrating season. I think I could be quite 



50 Letters from The Raven 

happy if I were a swallow and could have a sum- 
mer nest in the ear of an Egyptian colossus or 
a broken capital of the Parthenon. 

"I know just exactly what I should like to do, 
— to wander forever here and there until I got 
very old and apish and grey, and died, — just to 
wander where I pleased and keep myself to my- 
self, and never bother anybody. But that I can't 
do. Then what in the name of the Nine Incar- 
nations of Vishnu, can I do? Please try to tell me. 

"Shall I, in spite of myopia, seek for a pas- 
sage on some tropical vessel, and sail hither and 
thither on the main, like the ghost of Gawain 
on a wandering wind, till I have learned all the 
ropes and spars by heart, and know by sight the 
various rigging of all the navies of the world? 

"Shall I try to go back to England at once, 
instead of waiting to be a millionaire? (This is a 
seaport, remember: that is why I dread to leave 
it for further inland towns. I feel as if I could al- 
most catch a distant glimpse of the mighty dome 
of St. Paul's from the levee of New Orleans.) 

"Shall I begin to eat opium, and enjoy in 
fancy all that reality refuses, and may forever 
refuse me? 

"Shall I go to Texas and start a cheap bean- 



Letters from The Raven 51 

house — (hideous occupation!) with my pard, 
who wants me to go there? 

"Shall I cease to worry over fate and facts, 
and go right to hell on a 2.40, till I get tired 
even of hell and blow my highly sensitive and 
exquisitely delicate brains out? 

"Shall I try to get acquainted with Yellow 
Jack and the Charity Hospital, — or try to get 
to St. Louis on the next boat? Honestly, I 'd like 
to know. I'm so tired, — so awfully, fearfully, 
disgustingly tired of wasting my life without be- 
ing able to help it. Don't tell me I could have 
helped it, — I know better. No man could have 
helped doing anything already done. I hate the 
gilded slavery of newspaper work, — the starva- 
tion of Bohemianism, — the bore of waiting for 
a chance to become an insurance agent or a mag- 
azine writer, — and oh, venerable friend, I hate a 
thousand times worst of all to work for some- 
body else. I hoped to become independent when 
I came down here, — to work for myself; and I 
have made a most damnable failure of it. In ad- 
dition to the rest, my horrid eye is bad yet. I 
had lost nearly half the field of vision from con- 
gestion of the retina when I wrote you the rather 
frantic epistles which you would not answer. 



52 Letters from The Raven 

Now I see only in patches, but am getting along 
better and hope to be quite well in time, — cer- 
tainly much better. You see I can write a pretty 
long letter to while away Sunday idleness." 

Hearn had reached New Orleans at the time the 
yellow fever was raging there, and in April, 1878, 
he wrote reassuring his old friend that his health 
was not endangered: 

" Dear Old Man : Yellow Jack has not caught 
me; and since I was laid up with the dengue or 
break-bone fever, I believe I am acclimated. . . . 
They sprinkle the streets here with watering- 
carts filled with carbolic acid, pour lime in the 
gutters, and make all the preparations against 
fever possible, except the only sensible one of 
cleaning the stinking gutters and stopping up the 
pest-holes. Politicians make devilish bad health 
officers. When I tell you that all of our gutters 
are haunted by eels whose bite is certain death, 
you can imagine how vile they are. . . . Nobody 
works here in summer. The population would 
starve to death anywhere else. Neither does 
anybody think of working in the sun if they can 
help it. That is why we have no sunstroke. The 
horses usually wear hats." 



Letters from The Raven 53 

After a seven months' hunt for work Hearn 
saw some of the hardest times of his life in New 
Orleans. The situation, as he described £t in his 
letter to Mr. Watkin, could not have been worse 
than when, as a waif, he wandered the streets 
of London. It was postmarked June 14, 1878. 

"Dear Old Man: Wish you would tell me 
something wise and serviceable. I 'm completely 
and hopelessly busted up and flattened out, but 
I don't write this because I have any desire to 
ask you for pecuniary assistance, — have asked 
for that elsewhere. Have been here seven months 
and never made one cent in the city. No possi- 
ble prospect of doing anything in this town now 
or within twenty-five years. Books and clothes 
all gone, shirt sticking through seat of my pants, 
— literary work rejected East, — get a five-cent 
meal once in two days, — don't know one night 
where I 'm going to sleep next, — and am d — d 
sick with climate into the bargain. Yellow fever 
supposed to be in the city. Newspapers expected 
to bust up. Twenty dollars per month is a good 
living here; but it's simply impossible to make 
even ten. Have been cheated and swindled con- 
siderably; and have cheated and swindled others 



54 Letters from The Raven 

in retaliation. We are about even. D — n New 
Orleans ! — wish I 'd never seen it. I am thinking 
of going to Texas. How do you like the idea? — 
to Dallas or Waco. Eyes about played out, I 
guess. Have a sort of idea that I can be won- 
derfully economical if I get any more good luck. 
Can save fifteen out of twenty dollars a month — 
under new conditions (?). Have no regular place 
of residence now. Can't you drop a line to P. O. 
next week, letting shining drops of wisdom drip 
from the end of your pen?" 

It was right after this in the same month, 
when his fortunes were at the lowest ebb, that 
things took a turn for the better, as is indicated 
by the following, in which in jest he proposes to 
engage in a "get-rich-quick" scheme: 

"Dear Old Man: Somehow or other, when a 
man gets right down in the dirt, he jumps up again. 
The day after I wrote you, I got a position (with- 
out asking for it) as assistant editor on the Item, 
at a salary considerably smaller than that I re- 
ceived on the Commercial (of Cincinnati), but large 
enough to enable me to save half of it. There- 
fore I hasten to return Will's generous favor with 
the most sincere thanks and kindest wishes. You 



Letters from The Raven 55 

would scarcely know me now, for my face is thin- 
ner than a knife and my skin very dark. The 
Southern sun has turned me into a mulatto. I 
have ceased to wear spectacles, and my hair is wild 
and ghastly. I am seriously thinking of going into 
a fraud, which will pay like hell, — an advertis- 
ing fraud: buying land by the pound and selling 
it in boxes at one dollar per box. I have a party 
here now who wants to furnish bulk of capital 
and go shares. He is an old hand at the dodge. 
It would be carried along under false names, of 
course; and there is really no money in honest 

work I think I shall see you in the fall or 

spring; and when I come again to Cincinnati, it 
will be, my dear old man, as you would wish, with 
money in my pocket. It did me much good to 
hear from you; for I fancied my postal card ask- 
ing for help might have offended you; and I 
feared you had resolved that I was a fraud. Well, 
I am something of a fraud, but not to every- 
body I don't like the people here at all, and 

would not live here continually. But it is con- 
venient now, for I could not live cheaper else- 
where." 

Again undated, but belonging to his early New 



56 Letters from The Raven 

Orleans period, is the letter in which, after discuss- 
ing some business venture he had in mind, he 
says: 

" There is a strong feeling down here that the 
South will soon be the safest place to live in. 
The labor troubles North promise to be some- 
thing terrible. I assure you that few well-posted 
newspaper men here would care to exchange lo- 
calities until after these labor troubles have as- 
sumed some definite shape. There is no labor 
element here that is dangerous. 

"There are some businesses which would pay 
here : a cheap restaurant, a cheap swimming bath, 
or a cheap laundry. Money just now could be 
coined at any of these things. Everything else 
here is dead. I met a highly educated Jew here 
not long ago, who had lived and made money 
in New Zealand, Martinique, British Columbia, 
Panama, Sandwich Islands, Buenos Ayres, and 
San Francisco. C I have been/ he said, 'almost 
every place where money can be made, and I know 
almost every dodge known to Hebrews in the 
money-making way. But I do not see a single 
chance to make anything in this town.' He left 
for the North. He was from London. 

" I should like to see you down here, if it were 



Letters from The Raven 57 

not for malaria. You would not escape the reg- 
ular marsh fever; but that is not dangerous 
when the symptoms are recognized and promptly 
treated. When I had it I did not know what it 
was. I took instinctively a large dose of castor 
oil. Sometime after I met the druggist, a good 
old German, who sold it me. 'I never expected 
to see you again,' he said; c you had a very bad 
case of fever when I saw you.' 

" But everybody gets that here. You live so ab- 
stemiously and thirst so little after the flesh-pots 
that I think you would not have much to fear. 
I go swimming a good deal ; but I find the water 
horribly warm. The lake seems to be situated 
directly over the great furnace of Hell. . . . 

"I'll be doubly d — d if I have the vaguest idea 
what I shall do. I have a delightfully lazy life 
here; and I assure you I never intend to work 
fourteen hours a day again. But whether to leave 
here I don't know. I 'm only making about ten 
dollars a week, but that is better than making 
twenty-five dollars and being a slave to a news- 
paper. I write what I please, go when I please, 
and quit work when I please. I have really only 
three hours a day office duty, — mostly consumed 
in waiting for proofs. If I stay here, I can make 



58 Letters from The Raven 

more soon. But I don't really care a damn whether 
I make much money or not. If I have to make 
money by working hard for it, I shall certainly 
remain poor. I have done the last hard work I 
shall ever do. 

"On the success of some literary work, how- 
ever, I have a vague idea of receiving enough 
ready money to invest in some promising little 
specs, here, — of the nature I have already hinted 
at. If they pay, they will pay admirably. If I lose 
the money, I shan't die of starvation. . . . 

" I shall certainly not leave here before seeing 
Cuba. It would be a mortal sin to be so near the 
Antilles and yet never have sailed that sapphire 
sea yclept the Spanish Main. 

"I never felt so funny in my whole life. I 
have no ambition, no loves, no anxieties, — some- 
times a vague unrest without a motive, some- 
times a feeling as if my heart was winged and 
trying to soar away, sometimes a vague longing 
for pleasurable wanderings, sometimes a half- 
crazy passion for a great night with wine and wo- 
men and music. But these are much like flitting 
dreams, and amount to little. They are ephe- 
meral. The wandering passion is strongest of all; 
and I feel no inclination to avail myself of the 



Letters from The Raven 59 

only anchor which keeps the ship of a man's life 
in port. 

"Then again, — I have curiously regained me- 
mories of long ago, which I thought utterly for- 
gotten. Leisure lends memory a sharp definition. 
Life here is so lazy, — nights are so liquid with 
tropic moonlight, — days are so splendid with 
green and gold, — summer is so languid with per- 
fume and warmth, — that I hardly know whether 
I am dreaming or awake. It is all a dream here, 
I suppose, and will seem a dream even after the 
sharp awakening of another voyage, the immor- 
tal gods only know where. Ah ! Gods ! beautiful 
Gods of antiquity! One can only feel you, and 
know you, and believe in you, after living in this 
sweet, golden air. What is the good of dreaming 
about earthly women, when one is in love with 
marble, and ivory, and the bronzes of two thou- 
sand years ago? Let me be the last of the idol- 
worshippers, O golden Venus, and sacrifice to 
thee the twin doves thou lovest, — the birds of 
Paphos, — the Cythendae ! " 

Hearn had had his troubles with New Orleans 
and Cincinnati newspaper men, some of whom 
pirated his translations, while others printed slan- 
derous stories concerning his manner of living, — 



60 Letters from The Raven 

slanders which Mr. Watkin combated in a per- 
sonal letter to the editor of the Commercial some 
years after, when his attackers again became busy. 
On July 10, 18785 Hearn wrote: 

" My Dear Old Man : Was delighted to hear 
from you. I am very glad the thing is as much of 
a mystery to you as it is to me. I can only sur- 
mise that it must have been a piece of spite work 
on the part of a certain gentleman connected with 
the N. O. Times, who printed some of my work 
before, and got a raking for it. My position here 
is a peculiar one, and not as stable as I should 
like, so that if it were made to appear that I had 
re-utilized stuff from the Item, I would certainly 
get into trouble. I have been very ill for a week, 
break-bone fever. I do not expect to return North 
c broke.' c Cahlves is too scace in dis country to 
be killed for a prodigal son/ I wish you were 
near that I might whisper projects of colossal 
magnitude in your ear. I am working like hell 
to make a good raise for Europe.Will write more 
soon. Editor away to-day and the whole paper 
on my hands. 

"Monday. Delayed posting letter. I find this cli- 
mate terribly enervating. No one could have led 



Letters from The Raven 61 

a more monastic life than I have done here; yet 
I find I cannot even think energetically. The 
mind seems to lose all power of activity. I have 
been collecting materials for magazine articles, 
and I can't write them out. I have only been 
able to do mechanical work, — translating, &c, 
and one Romanesque essay, which was succes- 
sively rejected by three magazines. Wish I was 
on a polar expedition. 

"I have been an awfully good boy down here, 
and have no news to tell you of amours or curi- 
ous experiences. " 

Hearn once more tells of his trouble with a Cin- 
cinnati paper, alleging the owners failed to pay 
him for his New Orleans correspondence, and 
how finally he was "happily discharged." 

Then he resumes : " By the way, I wrote a poem 
for the decoration of the soldiers' graves at Chal- 
mette National Cemetery, on the 30th inst. I 
think it was. The poem was read by Col. Wright 
of this city at the decoration and published in the 
Democrat. It was the first bit of rhyme I wrote, 
and so you must excuse it. But it is not as good 
as — 



62 Letters from The Raven 

"The love of H earn and Watkin, 
What is its kin? — 
TV is two toads encysted 
Within one stone, 
Two vipers twisted 
Into one. 

"Here is the poem: 

" Fair flowers pass away : 
In perfumed ruin falls the lilys urn; 
In pallid pink decay 

Moulders the rose; — all in their time return 
To the primeval clay. 

"Yet still their tiny ghosts 
Hover about our homes on viewless wings; 
In incense-breathing hosts 

They love to haunt those stores of trifling things 
Of which affection boasts, — 

" Some curl of glossy hair, — 
Some loving letter penned by pretty fingers, — 
Some volume old and rare, 
On whose time-yellow fly-leaf fondly lingers 
The name of a woman fair. 

"So in that hour 
When brave lives fail and brave hearts cease to 

beat, — 
Each deed of power 



Letters from The Raven 63 

Lives on to haunt our memories^ — faintly sweet 
Like the ghost of a flower. 

"Each flower we strew 
In tribute to the brave to-day shall prove 
A token true 

Of some sweet memory of the dead we love, — 
The Men in Blue. 

"Perchance the story 
Of Chalmette* s heroes may be lost to fame ', 
As years wax hoary; 

But Valor's Angel keeps each gallant name 
On his Roll of Glory r 

August 14, 1878, Hearn wrote a letter to the 
man who had always cheered him and who now 
in turn needed cheering. Business in all lines in 
Cincinnati was bad, and Mr. Watkin was quite 
despondent. He had written Hearn something 
of this, and also had hinted that he might move 
to Kansas or somewhere farther West. In return 
he received the following letter, expressive of all 
that was most fun-loving in its writer: 

" My Dear Old Man : I think you had better 
come here next October and rejoin your naughty 
raven. It would not do you any harm to recon- 
noitre. Think of the times we could have, — de- 



6 4 Letters from The Raven 

lightful rooms with five large windows opening 
on piazzas shaded by banana trees; dining at 
Chinese restaurants and being served by Manila 
waitresses, with oblique eyes and skin like gold; 
visiting sugar-cane plantations ; scudding over to 
Cuba; dying with the mere delight of laziness; 
laughing at cold and smiling at the news of snow- 
storms a thousand miles away; eating the cheap- 
est food in the world, — and sinning the sweetest 
kind of sins. Now you know, good old Dad, 
nice old Dad, — you know that you are lazy and 
ought to be still lazier. Come here and be lazy. 
Let me be the siren voice enticing a Ulysses 
who does not stuff wax in his ears. Don't go to 
horrid, dreadful Kansas. Go to some outrageous 
ruinous land, where the moons are ten times 
larger than they are there. Or tell me to pull up 
stakes, and I shall take unto myself the wings of 
a bird and fly to any place but beastly Cincinnati. 
"Money can be made here out of the poor. 
People are so poor here that nothing pays ex- 
cept that which appeals to poverty. But I think 
you could make things hop around lively. Now 
one can make thirty milk biscuits for five cents 
and eight cups of coffee for five cents. Just think 
of it!... 



Letters from The Raven 65 

" Cincinnati is bad ; but it 's going to be a d — d 
sight worse. You know that as well as I do. 
Leave the vile hole and the long catalogue of 
Horrid Acquaintances behind you, and come 
down here to your own little man, — good little 
man. Get you nice room, nice board, nice busi- 
ness. Perhaps we might strike ile in a glorious 
spec. Why don't you spec? You'd better spec, 
pretty soon, or the times will get so bad that you 
will have to get up and dust. This is a seaport. 
There are tall ships here. They sail to Europe, — 
to London, Marseilles, Constantinople, Smyrna. 
They sail to the West Indies and those seaports 
where we are going to open a cigar store or some- 
thing of that kind. 

O/;, / have seven tall ships at sea. 
And seven more at hand; 
And five and twenty jolly, jolly sea?nen 
Shall be at your conunand. 

May the Immortal Gods preserve you in im- 
mortal youth." 

There now follow some letters whose dates 
it has been impossible to fix. The cancellation 
marks on the envelopes give the months, but 
not the years. However, there is internal evi- 



66 Letters from The Raven 

dence to show that they belong to the period 
between the last group and the group of 1882, 
so that they were written in the years 1 879, 1 8 80, 
and 1 88 1 j in all probability. The first is one 
of the most interesting letters in the whole set. 
The future great writer is displayed as the owner 
of a five-cent eating-house. The letter is replete 
with ridiculous little sketches of a bird, which 
he claimed was a raven. In fact, in the following, 
wherever "raven" is used, the reader must un- 
derstand that there is a drawing of one in the 
letter. It was written in February: 

" My Dear O. M. : Your style of correspond- 
ence — four letters a year — leads me to suppose 
that the fate of the Raven is of little conse- 
quence. It was therefore with surprise that I 
heard of a letter concerning It being received 
at the Item office. The letter warranted the as- 
sumption that you had at least some curiosity, if 
nothing better, in regard to It. That curiosity 
should be gratified. The Raven keepeth a restau- 
rant in the city of New Orleans. It is secretly in 
business for itself. It is also in the newspaper 
business. The reason It has gone into business 
for itself is that It is tired of working for other 



Letters from The Raven 67 

people. The reason that It is still in the news- 
paper line is that the business is not yet paying, 
and needs some financial support. The business 
is the cheapest in N. O. All dishes are five cents. 
Knocks the market price out of things. The 
business has already cost about one hundred 
dollars to set up. May pay well; may not. The 
Raven has apartner, — a large and ferocious man, 
who kills people that disagree with their coffee. 
The Raven expects to settle in Cuba before long. 
Is going there to reconnoitre in a few months, — 
if Fortune smileth. It has mastered the elements 
of Spanish language, and has a Spanish tutor 
who comes every day to teach It. It has been 
studying Spanish assiduously for six mos.; and 
trusts to be able to establish a meson de los es- 
trangeros^ or stranger's restaurant, in Havana, — 
unless It is busted up pretty soon. It might be 
busted up. As yet It has remained poor. Eco- 
nomy is the cause thereof. It has seen little of 
wine and women in this city. Its notions are 
mean and stingy. It is constantly suspicious that 
Its partner may go back on It. It is of a sus- 
picious character. It has debts on its mind, but 
prefers to look after its own interests at pre- 
sent, — until It can buy some clothes. It also 



68 Letters from The Raven 

proposes to establish another five-cent eating- 
house here in the French quarter, sooner or 
later, if this one pays. If the O. M. ever leaves 
Cincinnati, he may see the Raven. Otherwise 
he will not. If he comes to this part of the world, 
he can obtain board cheap at the five-cent re- 
staurant. The Raven would not object to see him 
again, — on the contrary, he is filled with curi- 
osity to see him. The Raven may succeed right 
off. He may not. But he is going to succeed 
sooner or later, even if he has to start an eating- 
house in Hell. He sends you his respects, — re- 
serving his affection for a later time." 

Hearn enclosed with the latter a yellow hand- 
bill advertising his restaurant. It was as follows: 

"T/ie 5 cent Restaurant 
1 60 Dryades Street 

This is the cheapest eating-house in the South. It is neat, 
orderly, and respectable as any other in New Orleans. Tou 
can get a good meal for a couple of nickels. All dishes 5 
cents. A large cup of pure Coffee, with Rolls, only 5 cents. 
Everything half the price of the markets." 

In a letter postmarked June 27, he again refers 
to his knowledge of Spanish, and, what is more 
interesting, makes his first reference to Japan, the 



Letters from The Raven 6 9 

country where he was to achieve his best work: 

"Your little Raven talks Spanish. Has a fair 
acquaintance with the language. Just now rusty 
for want of practice. Soon pick it up again. . . . 

"Have also wild theories regarding Japan. 

Splendid field in Japan Climate just like 

England, — perhaps a little milder. Plenty of 
Europeans. English, American and French pa- 
pers. . . . 

"Would not be surprised if you could make 
N. Orleans trip pay — now that I have seen your 
circulars. Only — remember CO. D. Everybody 
here is a thief. Must be careful even in changing 
a quarter not to get counterfeits or false change. 
Horrid den of villains, robbers, mutual admira- 
tion, — political quacks, medical quacks, literary 
quacks, — adventurers, Spanish, Italian, Greek, 
English, Corsican, French, Venezuelan, — Pari- 
sian roues, Sicilian murderers, Irish ruffians. . . . 
Couldn't be half so bad in Japan." 

The censure of New Orleans people must not 
be taken too seriously. He afterwards had some 
very dear friends there, who changed his opinions 
to a great extent. On November 24 came a letter 
liberally sprinkled with drawings of the raven 
and replete with his fun: 



70 Letters from The Raven 

"Dear Old Man: The Raven has not found 
letter-writing a pleasant occupation lately. It has 
had some trouble ; It has also been studying very 
hard; It has had Its literary work doubled, and It 
has had little leisure time, as Its grotesque and 
fantastic Eye is not yet in a healthy condition. 
It cannot write at night, not in these beautiful 
Southern Nights, which flame with stars, — the 
'holy Night,' as the old Greek poet called it, 
which is c all Eye, all Ear, all perfume to the stu- 
dent/ 

" The Raven would like to see you, as It could 
tell you a great many queer things about South- 
ern matters, which no paper has published or 
dare publish, and about the city and about the 
people. But It hardly hopes to see you; for after 
this summer It will not be here. It has latterly 
heard much of advantages held out to It in Mex- 
ico City, where the great exposition is soon to 
be held; and Its Spanish studies have been suc- 
cessful. It wants to find a temporary resting-place 
among Spanish people, and cannot stay here. It 
would be pleased to forget Its own language for 
a while, whether in Cuba or elsewhere. . . . The 
Raven cannot go North, as It cannot afford to. 
It will require all It can save to carry It through 



Letters from The Raven 71 

troubles which await It somewhere else, — for 
thou knowest full well that Woe is the normal 
condition of the Raven's existence. The Raven 
passeth Its time thusly: In the morning It aris- 
eth with the Sun and drinketh a cup of coffee 
and devoureth a piece of bread. Then It proceed- 
ed to the office and conco&eth devilment for the 
Item. Then It returneth to Its room, whose win- 
dows are shadowed by creeping plants and clouds 
of mosquitoes, and receiveth Its Spanish tutor. 
Then It goeth to a Chinese restaurant, where It 
eateth an amazing dinner, — Its bump of alimen- 
tativeness being enormously developed. Then 
It spendeth two hours among the second-hand 
bookstores. It then goeth to bed, — to arise in 
the dead vast and middle of the night and smoke 
Its pipe. For a year It hath not smoked a cigar; 
and Its morals are exemplary. It sendeth you Its 
affedionate good-will and proceedeth forthwith 
to smoke Its pipe." 

Again, without any clue as to its date and with- 
out any aid from the memory of Mr. Watkin, 
is a small photograph of the writer, with this 
characteristic note: 

"Dear Old Dad: Would like to hear from 



72 Letters from The Raven 

you, to see you, to chat with you. Write me a 
line or two. As soon as I can find time, will 
write a nice, long, chatty letter, — all about every- 
thing you would like to hear. Am doing well. 
New Orleans is not, however, what I hoped it 
was. Are you well and happy ? I have thoughts 
of cemeteries and graves, and a dear old Ghost 
with a white beard, — a Voice of the Past. 
" I press your hand. 

" Lafcadio Hearn" 

In a letter dated July 7, 1882, Hearn tells of 
his first adventures in the book-writing line and 
of the horrified criticisms of some of the East- 
ern book-reviewers. All told, however, he be- 
comes the more purposeful Hearn, the man Mr. 
Watkin had always predicted he would be if he 
continued at his literary work in his own way. 
It is interesting for another reason, too, in that 
it shows how already, in these New Orleans days, 
Hearn was preparing himself by his studies for 
his future life in Japan. 

" My Dear Old Dad : Your letter lies before 
me here like a white tablet of stone bearing a 
dead name; and in my mind there is just such 
a silence as one feels standing before a tomb, — 





7c "& - 

y^ HZZL /^uw^- j^°^ UrcM, (AaJL~> lyexj " ^CT 4v<rKu*«X, 
...J^CZ, n PCT Aft] '^ ^^a,. 

nv,^ ^(a^a/aZ^ ,-- fas J-T {A< ^^^ /0 

FACSIMILE OF PART OF A LETTER FROM HEARN TO MR. WATKIN 










v f i f & r * 



f 



Letters from The Raven 73 

so that I can press your hand only and say no- 
thing. 

&IMsM§fi- 




A FANCIFUL PENCIL SKETCH BY HEARN 



" I must go North in a few months, by way 
of Cincinnati, and spend a week or so in the city. 



74 Letters from The Raven 

My intention is to see Worthington about a new 
publication. He is now in Europe. Here I make 
thirty dollars a week for about five hours' work 
a day, and the position appears tolerably solid; 
but the climate is enervating, the man who re- 
fuses to connect himself with church or clique 
lives alone like a hermit in the Thebaids, and 
one sickens of such a life at times. Sometimes 
I fancy that the older I grow, the more distaste- 
ful companionship becomes; but this may be ow- 
ing to the situation here. Nevertheless I am feel- 
ing very old, old almost as the Tartar of Long- 
fellow's poem, — * three hundred and sixty years.' 
"Imagine the heavy, rancid air of a Southern 
swamp in midsummer, when the very clouds 
seem like those which belonged to the atmo- 
sphere of pregeologic periods, uncreated lead and 
iron, — never a breath of pure air, — dust that is 
powdered dung, — quaking ground that shakes 
with the passage of a wagon, — heat as of a per- 
petual vapor bath, — and at night, subtle damps 
that fill the bones with rheumatism and poison 
the blood. Then, when one thinks of green hills 
and brisk winds, comes a strange despondency. 
It is something like the outlying region through 
which Milton's Lucifer passed, half crawling, 



Letters from The Raven 75 

half flying, on his way to the Garden of Eden. 
Your little reprints provoked very pleasant old 
memories. I paid the Somebody one hundred 
and fifty dollars for the publication/ 1 ' Have not 
yet heard from him. The understanding is that I 
get my money back and something besides. How- 
ever, I shall be satisfied with the something. I 
have had many nice notices, letters from authors 
of some note, and a few criticisms of the true 
Pharisaic species. I enclose one for your amuse- 
ment. I have also built up a fine library, about 
three hundred picked volumes, and have a little 
money saved. Have also some ambition to try 
the book business, — not here, but in San Fran- 
cisco or somewhere else. However, I have no de- 
finite plans, — only a purpose to do something 
for myself and thus obtain leisure for a syste- 
matic literary purpose. Were you situated like 
me, — that is, having no large business or large 
interests, — I think I should try to coax you to 
seek the El Dorado of the future, where for- 
tunes will certainly be made by practical men, — 
Mexico, — where no one ever lights a fire, and 
where one has only to go in the sun when he is 
too cold, into the shade when he is too warm. 
* Translation of Gautier's short stories. 



76 Letters from The Raven 

But for the present I will only ask you to come 
down here when the weather gets healthy and 
your business will allow it. You will stay with me, 
of course, and no expense. The trip would be 
agreeable in the season when the air is sweet 
with orange blossoms. 

"The population here is exceedingly queer, — 
something it is hard to describe, and something 
which it is possible to learn only after a painful 
experience of years. At present I may say that 
all my acquaintances here are limited to about 
half a dozen, with one or two friends whom I in- 
vite to see me occasionally. Yet almost daily I 
receive letters from people I do not know, ask- 
ing favors which I never grant. New Orleans is 
the best school for the study of human selfish- 
ness I have ever been in. Buddhism teaches that 
the second birth is to this life c as the echo to the 
voice in the cavern, as the great footprints to 
the steps of the elephant.' According to the teach- 
ing of the Oriental Christ, this whole population 
will be born again as wild beasts, — which is con- 
soling. . . . You say you cannot write. I differ 
with you; but it would certainly be impossible 
for either of us to write many things we would 
like to say. Still, you can easily drop a line from 



Letters from The Raven 77 

time to time, even a postal card, just to let me 
know you are well. If I do not get up to see you 
by September, I hope to see you down. I dreamed 
one night that I heard the ticking of the queer 
clock, — like the longstrides of a man booted and 
spurred. You know the clock I mean, — the long, 
weird-faced clock. My eyes are not well, of course, 
— never will be ; but they are better. More about 
myself I cannot tell you in a letter, — except 
that I suppose I have changed a little. Less de- 
spondent, but less hopeful; wiser a little and 
more silent; less nervous, but less merry; more 
systematic and perhaps a good deal more selfish. 
Not strictly economical, but coming to it stead- 
ily; and in leisure hours studying the theories of 
the East, the poetry of antique India, the teach- 
ings of the wise concerning absorption and ema- 
nation, the illusions of existence, and happiness 
as the equivalent of annihilation. Think they were 
wiser than the wisest of Occidental ecclesiastics. 
"And still there is in life much sweetness and 
much pleasure in the accomplishment of a fixed 
purpose. Existence may be a delusion and de- 
sire a snare, but I expect to exist long enough 
to satisfy my desire to see thee again before en- 
tering Nirvana. So, reaching to thee the grasp 



78 Letters from The Raven 

of friendship across the distance of a thousand 
miles, I remain in the hope of being always re- 
membered sincerely as your friend. " 

On September i o, 1 8 82, in reply to a letter from 
Mr. Watkin, in which the latter said he thought 
of going to Tampa for a rest and possibly also 
to look around and see what the business pro- 
spects were, Hearn filled five big sheets with all 
the information he could gather about Tampa, 
from facts about fleas to a glowing eulogy of the 
moon, — "seven times larger than your cold 
moon." 

Following upon his translations of Gautier, 
Hearn busied himself with translations from Flau- 
bert, and sent the manuscript of the proposed 
title-page and introduction to Mr. Watkin to set 
up, as he was superstitious about his "Dear Old 
Dad" bringing him luck. As usual he urged his 
friend to visit him, drawing in a letter of Septem- 
ber 14, 1882, the following alluring pictures: 

"In October we shall have exquisite weather 
— St. Martin's summer, the Creoles call it, — 
something like Indian summer North. Then I 
shall indeed hope to see you. No danger now of 
fever; and will have a nice healthy room for you. 



Letters from The Raven 79 

If you can't get away in October, wait till No- 
vember, — nice and clear month generally, with 
orange-blossom smells. Raven wants to have a 
big talk. As for writing, don't write if it bothers 
you. I am sure you cannot have much time and 
must take care of your eyes. Perhaps some day we 
can both take things more easily, and a long rest 
by running streams, near mountain winds and in 
a climate like unto an eternal mountain spring- 
time. Dream of voices of birds, whisper of leaves, 
milky quivering of stars, laughing of streams, 
odors of pine and of savage flowers, shadows 
of flying clouds, winds triumphantly free. Horri- 
ble cities! vile air! abominable noises! sickness! 
humdrum human machines! Let us strike our 
tents! move a little nearer to Nature!" 

October 26, 1882, still writing about the pro- 
mised visit of Mr. Watkin, he sent the following : 

"My Dear Old Man: As the twig is bent, 
&c. — neither you nor I can now correct our- 
selves of habits. We are both old. [Hearn was 
thirty-two and Mr. Watkin fifty-nine.] I, for my 
part, feel ancient as the moon, and regret the de- 
parture of my youth. But I observe that all my 
best friends have the same habit. There 's Charley 



80 Letters from The Raven 

Johnson, — wrote me twice in five years. There's 
the old newspaper coteries never write me at all. 
There is myself, just as bad as anybody. When 
somebody asked Theophile Gautier to write, he 
answered, £ Oh, ask a carpenter to plane planks 

just for fun!' It is a fact. Life's too short I 

was afraid for a while that Yellow Jack was try- 
ing to climb up this way from Pensacola; but I 
think all danger is now over. The weather feels 
chilly to us, — alligator-blooded and web-footed 
dwellers of the swamp (the Dismal Swamp) : it 
will feel warm to you. . . . 

"Yes; I think a river trip down would be nicer 
for you, as it would include rest, good living, 
and a certain magical illusion of Southern beau- 
ties which bewitched me into making my dwell- 
ing-place among the frogs and bugs and the 
everlasting mosquitoes. 'Bugs' here mean every 
flying and crawling thing whereof the entomo- 
logy is unknown to the people. The electric lights 
nightly murder centillions of them." 

The letter is signed as usual with the drawing 
of a raven. As a novelty, the bird is looking at 
a steamer bearing over the side-wheel the name 

Watkin. 



Letters from The Raven 81 

November 24, 1882, he wrote to Mr. Watkin, 
foreshadowing the book, "Stray Leaves from 
Strange Literatures," which was to bring him his 
first meed of praise from all sides. Again in this 
letter he somewhat despondently referred to his 
being a small man in a world where, according 
to his morbid views, big men won all the battles: 

" I'm busy on a collection of Oriental legends, 
— Brahmanic, Buddhistic, Talmudic, Arabic, 
Chinese, and Polynesian, — which I hope to have 
ready in the spring. I think I can get Scribner or 
Osgood to bring it out. 

"I think myself that life is worth living un- 
der the conditions you speak of; but they are 
very hard to obtain. I would be glad to try a 
new climate, — a new climate is a new life, a new 
youth. Here the problem of existence forever 
stares one in the face with eyes of iron. Inde- 
pendence is so hard to obtain, — the churches, the 
societies, the organizations, the cliques, the hum- 
bugs are all working against the man who tries 
to preserve independence of thought and a&ion. 
Outside of these one cannot obtain a woman's 
society, and if obtained one is forever buried 
in the mediocrity to which she belongs. . . . My 
idea of perfect bliss would be ease and absolute 



82 Letters from The Raven 

quiet, — silence, dreams, tepidness, — great quaint 
rooms overlooking a street full of shadows and 
emptiness, — friends in the evening, a pipe, a lit- 
tle philosophy, wandering under the moon. . . . 
I am beginning to imagine that to be forever in 
the company of one woman would kill a man 
with ennui. And I feel that I am getting old — 
immemorially old, — older than the moon. I 
ought never to have been born in this century, 
I think sometimes, because I live forever in 
dreams of other centuries and other faiths and 
other ethics, — dreams rudely broken by the 
sound of cursing in the street below, cursing in 
seven different languages. I can't tell you much 
else about myself. I live in my books, and the 
smoke of my pipe, and ideas that nobody has any 
right expecting a good time in this world unless 
he be gifted with great physical strength and force 
of will. These give success. Little phantoms of 
men are blown about like down in the storms of 
the human struggle: they have not enough weight 
to keep them in place. And the Talmud says: 
'There are three whose life is no life: the Sym- 
pathetic man, the Irascible, and the Melan- 
choly.' But alas! the art by which the Sorceress 
of Colchis could recreate a body by cutting it up 



Letters from The Raven 83 

and boiling it in a pot is lost. Don't you think 
happiness is solely the result of perfect health 
under normal conditions of existence? I believe 
in the German philosopher who said that whether 
one had a billion dollars a day or only one dol- 
lar a week, it made no difference in regard to the 
amount of happiness a human brain was suscep- 
tible of. Still, it would be so nice to avoid the op- 
posite by walling oneself up from the human spe- 
cies, — like the Cainites, whose cities were ' walled 
up to Heaven.'" 

There now ensues in the correspondence, a si- 
lence extending over a period of nearly five years. 
These were busy years for Hearn. His position 
in the New Orleans newspaper world became a 
prominent one, and his translations of stories 
from the French, made for the papers by which 
he was employed, were so favorably received as to 
give him greater confidence in his own abilities. 

Early in June of the year 1887 things began 
to take a turn for greater work for Hearn. His 
studies of the negroes and the Creoles of Lou- 
isiana had attracted the attention of the publish- 
ers, and he had received some rather tempting 
offers to do work for them. It was then that he 
left New Orleans, going to New York by way of 



8 4 Letters from The Raven 

Cincinnati. With all of his old shyness, his avoid- 
ance of mere acquaintances, and his love of the 
white-haired old gentleman, who alone in Cincin- 
nati had understood him, Hearn spent his entire 
day in Cincinnati in chat at Watkin's printing 
office, which was then situated at 16 Longworth 
Street. It was there that Hearn saw once more 
the tall clock, whose peculiar ticking seemed to 
have fascinated him and to which references are 
made even in his few letters from Japan. After 
the day with Mr. Watkin, he went direct to New 
York, where he was the guest of his friend, Mr. 
H. E. Krehbiel, the well-known musical critic, 
who was then living at 438 West 57th Street. 
From there it was that Hearn wrote to his men- 
tor the following confession of affection and gra- 
titude: 

"Dear Old Man: A delightful trip brought 
me safe and sound to New York, where my dear 
friend Krehbiel was waiting to take me to his 
cosy home. I cannot tell you how much our lit- 
tle meeting delighted me, or how much I re- 
gretted to depart so soon, or how differently I 
regarded our old friendship from my old way 
of looking at it. I was too young, too foolish, 



Letters from The Raven 85 

and too selfish to know you as you are, when we 
used to be together. Ten years made little ex- 
terior change in me, but a great deal of heart- 
change; and I saw you as you are, — noble and 
true and frank and generous, and felt I loved you 
more than I ever did before; felt also how much 
I owed you, and will always owe you, — and un- 
derstood how much allowance you had made for 
all my horrid, foolish ways when I used to be 
with you. Well, I am sure to see you again. I 
am having one of the most delightful holidays 
here I ever had in my life; and I expect to stay 
a few weeks. If it were not for the terrible win- 
ters, I should like to live in New York. Some 
day I suppose I shall have to spend a good deal 
of my time here. The houses eleven stories high, 
that seem trying to climb into the moon, — the 
tremendous streets and roads, — the cascading 
thunder of the awful torrent of life, — the sense 
of wealth-force and mind-power that oppresses 
the stranger here, — all these form so colossal 
a contrast with the inert and warmly colored 
Southern life that I know not how to express my 
impression. I can only think that I have found 
superb material for a future story, in which the 
influence of New York on a Southern mind may 



86 Letters from The Raven 

be described. Well, new as these things may 
seem to me, they are, no doubt, old and uninter- 
esting to you, — so that I shall not bore you with 
my impressions. I will look forward to our next 
meeting, when during a longer stay in Cin. I can 
tell you such little experiences of my trip as may 
please you. I want to get into that dear little shop 
of yours again. I dreamed of it the other night, 
and heard the tickingof the oldclock like a man's 
feet treading on pavement far away; and I saw 
the Sphinx, with the mother and child in her 
arms, move her monstrous head, and observe: 
'The sky in New York is grey!' 

"When I woke up it was grey, and it re- 
mained grey until to-day. Even now it is not 
like our summer blue. It looks higher and paler 
and colder. We are nearer to God in the South, 
just as we are nearer to Death in that terrible 
and splendid heat of the Gulf Coast. When I 
write God, of course I mean only the World- 
Soul, the mighty and sweetest life of Nature, 
the great Blue Ghost, the Holy Ghost which 
fills planets and hearts with beauty. 
"Believe me, Dear Old Dad, 

"Affectionately, your son, 

"Lafcadio Hearn " 



Letters from The Raven 87 

Below this is once more the familiar drawing 
of the raven. 

From this time on the letters came at greater 
and greater intervals. There were only three 
more from America and then four from Japan. 
It was not that Hearn forgot his old friend or 
cared less for him. But he became busier, and 
with larger projects, newer aims, and a different 
life, there was less time in which to indulge him- 
self in the active correspondence of former years. 
Between the New York group of letters and 
those from Japan is a gap. Letters on both sides 
had become a matter of years instead of weeks 
or months. Mr. Watkin, with the increasing 
weight of years on his shoulders and the increas- 
ing cares of a business that had begun to decline 
with the introduction of modern printing me- 
thods, found less time to write to his Raven. 

Early in July, 1887, Hearn at last departed 
on that long-wished-for journey to the West In- 
dies. A note, hastily scribbled to Mr. Watkin, 
told of the arrangements: 

"Dear Old Man: I leave on the Barracouta 
for Trinidad, Sunday, at daybreak. I have been 
travelling about a good deal, and have been si- 



88 Letters from The Raven 

lent only because so busy and so tired when the 
business was over. Your dear letter and your ex- 
cellent little stamp both delighted me. I will let 
you hear from me soon again, — that is, as soon 
as I can get to a P. O. 

"With affection, always your little Raven, 

"Lafcadio Hearn" 

This promise of frequent letters was one he was 
not destined to keep. Once in the West Indies, 
he found himself so enthralled by its beauties, 
so busy putting on paper his impressions of what 
he was seeing and breathing and feeling, that it 
was not until he was once more in the United 
States that he found time to write. 

September ai, 1887, he sent the following 
from Metuchen, New Jersey: 

"Dear Old Dad: After three months or so 
in the West Indies and British Guiana, I am 
back again in the U. S. in first-rate health and 
spirits. I ought to have been able to write you, 
I thought, from Martinique; but the enormous 
and unexpected volume of work I had to do ren- 
dered it almost impossible to write anything ex- 
cept business letters to Harpers, and one or two 
necessary notes to friends looking after my af- 



Letters from The Raven 89 

fairs elsewhere. My conviction is that you and 
I would do well to spend our lives in the An- 
tilles. All dreams of Paradise (even Mahomet's) 
are more than realized there by nature; — after 
returning, I find this world all colorless, all grey, 
and fearfully cold. I feel like an outcast from 
heaven. But it is no use trying to tell you any- 
thing about it in a letter. I wrote nearly three 
hundred pages of manuscript to the Harpers 
about it, — and I have not been able to say one 
thousandth part. J got two little orders for stamps 
for you at Martinique, — pencil stamps like the 
one you made for me. One is to be c Plissonneau, 
fils;' the other, C A. Testart.' Send bill to me, 
and stamps to A. Testart, St. Pierre, Martinique, 
French W. Indies. I hope to see you on my way 
South, dear old Dad. 

"Believe me always, 

"Lafcadio Hearn" 

In view of the terrible catastrophe at St. Pierre, 
it would be interesting to know whether Hearn's 
friends perished in that fury of fire and lava and 
hot ashes. Hearn's expectations about returning 
to New Orleans were not destined to be fulfilled. 
So successful had he been in his work for Har- 



90 Letters from The Raven 

pers that, a week later than the date of the pre- 
vious letter, he had the satisfaction of announ- 
cing that he was going back to what at that time 
seemed to him the most delightful region in the 
world. The opening of this letter is unique, in that 
it is the only one in which he is in the least cere- 
monious: 

"H. Watkin, Esq., Dear Old Dad: I am 
going right back to the Tropics again, this time 
to stay. I have quit newspapering forever. Wish 
I could see you and chat with you before I go, 
but I cannot get a chance this time. My address 
will be care American Consul, St. Pierre, Mar- 
tinique, Lesser Antilles. I may not be there all 
the time, but that will be my headquarters, and 
there letters will always reach me. To-day I am 
packing, rushing around breathlessly, preparing 
to go, — so that my letter must be brief. I did bet- 
ter with my venture than I ever expected ; for I 
got for my work done seven hundred dollars, 
besides having secured material for much better 
work. You will hear of me in the Harper's Mag- 
azine this winter, — beginning about January and 
February. I shall be able hereafter to rest where 
I please; so that I shall have no trouble, when 



Letters from The Raven 9 i 

I get to New York again, in running to Cincin- 
nati. Of course I don't want my little plans known 
yet, — because no one knows what might turn 
up; but these are the present prospecls, — quite 
bright for me. I will write from Martinique or 
Guadeloupe, and try to coax you to go down 
there. Good-bye for a little while, with my best 

love to you. 

y <C L. Hearn" 

Again this promise of letters from the West 
Indies was destined to be broken. While lotus- 
eating, Hearn wrote few letters. He was most 
probably busy, amid the glow and color of the 
Antilles,studyingthe philosophical, scientific, and 
religious works which were destined so strongly 
to color his writings about Japan. He went to 
the latter country in 1 890. In order that the reader 
may have a clear understanding of events, the 
facls in Hearn's Japanese career may be told in a 
few words. In 1890 and 1891 he served as Eng- 
lish teacher in the ordinary middle school and 
the normal school of Matsue in Izumo. Next he 
was connected with the government school at 
Kumamoto. Then came newspaper work at Kobe, 
and finally in 1896 he was honored by being 
made ledurer on English literature at the Impe- 



92 Letters from The Raven 

rial University of Tokio, which position he held 
until 1903, when he retired, owing to increasing 
trouble with his eyes, which had caused him anx- 
iety all his life. He was contemplating a lecture 
trip in the United States, but ill health pre- 
vented. He died at his Tokio home September 
26, 1904, and was buried September 29, with the 
Buddhist rites, the funeral service being held at 
the temple of Jito-in of Ichigaya. He now sleeps 
in the lonely old cemetery of Zoshigaya in the 
outskirts of the capital. Shortly after Hearn 
reached Japan Mr. Watkin obtained his address, 
and wrote him a letter telling how often he had 
thought of him and had expected to hear from 
him in the two years and more that had elapsed 
since their last letters. This brought a speedy re- 
ply, — a reply which showed that, so far as his feel- 
ing for the old English printer was concerned, 
there was little difference between the immature, 
ambition-stung youth of nineteen and the well- 
known, mature author of forty, who felt in some 
dim way that there amid this Oriental people he 
was destined to live and die. The reply to Mr. 
Watkin is from Yokohama, and, contrary to 
Hearn's previous rule, is actually dated, — April 
25, 1890. 



Letters from The Raven 



93 



"Dear Old Dad: I was very happy to feel 
that your dear heart thought about me; I also 
have often found myself dreaming of you. I ar- 
rived here, by way of Canada and Vancouver, 
after passing some years in the West Indies. I 
think I shall stay here some years. I have not 
been getting rich, — quite the contrary ; but I am 
at least preparing a foundation for ultimate inde- 
pendence, — if I keep my health. It is very good 
now, but I have many grey hairs, and I shall be 
next June forty years old. 

"I trust to make enough in a year or two to 
realize my dream of a home in the West Indies; 
if I succeed, I must try to coax you to come along, 
and dream life away quietly where all is sun and 
beauty. But no one ever lived who seemed more 
a creature of circumstances than I ; I drift with va- 
rious forces in the direction of least resistance, — 
resolve to love nothing, and love always too much 
for my own peace of mind, — places, things, and 
persons, — and lo! presto! everything is swept 
away, and becomes a dream, — like life itself. 

" Perhaps there will be a great awakening; and 
each will cease to be an Ego, but an All, and will 
know the divinity of Man by seeing, as the veil 
falls, himself in each and all. 



94 Letters from The Raven 

"Here I am in the land of dreams, — sur- 
rounded by strange Gods. I seem to have known 
and loved them before somewhere: I burn in- 
cense before them. I pass much of my time in 
the temples, trying to see into the heart of this 
mysterious people. In order to do so I have to 
blend with them and become a part of them. It 
is not easy. But I hope to learn the language; 
and if I do not, in spite of myself, settle here, 
you will see me again. If you do not, I shall be 
under big trees in some old Buddhist cemetery, 
with six laths above me, inscribed with prayers 
in an unknown tongue, and a queerly carved 
monument typifying those five elements into 
which we are supposed to melt away. I trust all 
is well with you, dear old Dad. Write me when 
it will not pain your eyes. Tell me all you can 
about yourself. Be sure that I always remember 
you; and that my love goes to you. 

"Lafcadio Hearn 

"I could tell you so much to make you laugh 
if you were here; and to hear you laugh again 
would make me very happy. " 

An interval of over four years now occurred 
before Hearn wrote once more to Cincinnati. 



Letters from The Raven 95 

Some very decided changes had taken place in 
his life. He had wedded a Japanese woman, he 
had a son, and he was reputed to have become 
a Buddhist. He had been successful with his lit- 
erary work, his essays on things Japanese being 
among the most noteworthy and popular articles 
in the Atlantic Monthly \ It was at this period, when 
Mr. Watkin thought his friend was most happy, 
that he received a long reply from Japan in re- 
sponse to a joint letter sent by the old gentleman 
and his daughter, Miss Effie Watkin. It is a sin- 
gular thing that it was not until this time that 
Hearn ever mentioned Mr. Watkin's wife and 
daughter. He had in truth been few times in their 
presence. Mrs. Watkin, a woman of strong com- 
mon sense, had found the foolish superstitions of 
the young lad hard to bear, and he had accord- 
ingly, when in Cincinnati, confined his particular 
friendship to the husband and father. The letter 
from Hearn rather surprised its recipient by rea- 
son of its despondency. It had much of the old 
gloomy cast of thought. For this there were two 
potent reasons. One was his worry over his son's 
future. The other was his worry over that Japan 
he had learned to love so well. He felt doubtful 
about the outcome of the war with China, — the 



96 Letters from The Raven 

letter was written in September, 1 894, — and trou- 
bles for the Mikado's empire always made him 
a little sad. Singularly enough, the same feeling 
can be traced very clearly in his book, "Japan, An 
Attempt at Interpretation/' written in the first 
months of the struggle with Russia. 

One other word of introductory comment is 
necessary. His seeming depreciation of his own 
essays was only the reflection of his general 
gloomy viewpoint at the time the letter was writ- 
ten. Hearn was dwelling at the time at Kuma- 
moto. 

" Dear Old Dad : It delighted me to get that 
kindest double letter from yourself and sweet- 
hearted little daughter, — or rather delighted us. 
My wife speaks no English, but I translated it 
for her. She will send a letter in Japanese, which 
Miss Effie will not be able to read, but which 
she will keep as a curiosity perhaps. Our love to 
you both. 

"How often I have thought of you, and won- 
dered about you, and wished I could pass with you 
more of the old-fashioned evenings, reading an- 
cient volumes of the Atlantic Monthly ^ — so much 
better a magazine in those days than in these, when 



Letters from The Raven 97 

I am regularly advertised as one of its contributors. 

"I often wonder now at your infinite patience 
with the extraordinary, superhuman foolishness 
and wickedness of the worst pet you ever had 
in your life. When I think of all the naughty, 
mean, absurd, detestable things I did to vex you 
and to scandalize you, I can't for the life of me 
understand why you did n't want to kill me, — 
as a sacrifice to the Gods. What an idiot I was ! 
— and how could you be so good? — and why 
do men change so? I think of my old self as of 
something which ought not to have been allowed 
to exist on the face of the earth, — and yet, in 
my present self, I sometimes feel ghostly re- 
minders that the old self was very real indeed. 
Well, I wish I were near you to love you and 
make up for all old troubles. 

"I have a son. He is my torment and my 
pride. He is not like me oralis mother. He has 
chestnut hair and blue eyes, and is enormously 
strong, — the old Gothic blood came out upper- 
most. I am, of course, very anxious about him. 
He can't become a Japanese, — his soul is all Eng- 
lish, and his looks. I must educate him abroad. 
Head all above the ears, — promises to be intel- 
ligent. I shall never have another child. I feel 



98 Letters from The Raven 

too heavily the tremendous responsibility of the 
thing. But the boy is there, — -intensely alive; 
and I must devote the rest of my existence to 
him. One thing I hope for is that he will never 
be capable of doing such foolish things as his 
daddy used to do. His name is Kaji-wo or Ka- 
jio. He does not cry, and has a tremendous ca- 
pacity for growing. And he gives me the great- 
est variety of anxiety about his future. 

"When you hear that I have been able to save 
between thirty-five hundred and four thousand 
dollars, you will not think I have made no pro- 
gress. But I have put all, or all that I could rea- 
sonably do, in my wife's name. The future looks 
very black. The rea&ion against foreign influ- 
ence is strong; and I feel more and more every 
day that I shall have to leave Japan eventually, 
at least for some years. When I first met you 
I was — nineteen. I am now forty-four! Well, I 
suppose I must have lots more trouble before I 
go to Nirvana. 

"Efrle says you do not see my writings. My 
book will be out by the time you get this letter, 
— that is, my first book on Japan.* Efrie can read 
bits of it to you. And I figure in the Atlantic 
* Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. 



Letters from The Raven 99 

every few months. Cheap fame; — the amazing 
fortune I once expected does n't turn up at all. 
I have been obliged to learn the fact that I am 
not a genius, and that I must be content with 
the crumbs from the table of Dives. 

" But this is all Egotism. I am guilty of it only 
because you asked for a small quantity. About 
yourself and all who love you my letter rather 
ought to be. Speak always well of me to John 
Chamberlain [a journalist] . I liked him well. Do 
you remember the long walks over the Ohio, 
in the evening, among the fireflies and grass- 
hoppers, to hear lectures upon spiritual things? 
If I were near you now, I could saturate you 
with Oriental spiritualism, — Buddhism, — every- 
thing you would like, but after a totally novel 
fashion. When one has lived alone five years in 
a Buddhist atmosphere, one naturally becomes 
penetrated by the thoughts that hover in it; my 
whole thinking, I must acknowledge, has been 
changed, in spite of my long studies of Spencer 
and of Schopenhauer. I do not mean that I am a 
Buddhist, but I mean that the inherited ances- 
tral feelings about the universe — the Occiden- 
tal ideas every Englishman has — have been to- 
tally transformed. 



IOO 



Letters from The Raven 



"There is yet no fixity, however: the changes 
continue, — and I really do not know how I shall 
feel about the universe later on. What a pity 
that Western education and Western ideas only 
corrupt and spoil the Japanese, — and that the 
Japanese peasant is now superior to the Japa- 
nese noble! 

"You have heard of the war. The Japanese 
are a fighting race; and I think they will win all 
the battles. But to conquer a Chinese army is not 
the same thing as to conquer the Chinese gov- 
ernment. The war makes us all uneasy. Japan's 
weakness is financial. A country where it costs a 
dollar a month to live, and where the population 
is only forty million, is not really strong enough 
for such an enormous job. Our hope is that sci- 
ence and rapidity of movement may compensate 
for smallness of resources. 

" I am almost sure I shall have to seek Ame- 
rica again. If that happens, I shall see you or 
die. All now is doubt and confusion. But in this 
little house all is love to you. We have your 
picture; ... we all know you, as if you were an 
old acquaintance. 

" I wish we could be together somewhere for 
a pleasant evening chat, hearing in the inter- 



Letters from The Raven 



IOI 



vals the office clock, like the sound of a long- 
legged walker. I wish we could talk over all 
the hopes and dreams of ideal societies, and the 
reasons of the failure to realize them. I wish I 
could tell you about the ideas of Western civili- 
zation which are produced by a long sojourn in 
the Orient. How pleasant to take country walks 
again! that is, if there be any country left around 
Cincinnati. How pleasant to read to you strange 
stories and theories from the Far East! Still, I 
have become so accustomed to Japanese life that 
a return to Western ways would not be altogether 
easy at first. What a pity I did not reach Japan 
ten years sooner! 

"Tell me, if you write again, all pleasant news 
about old friends. Love to you always, and be- 
lieve me ever, 

"Your extremely bad and ungrateful 
"Grey-headed boy, 

"Lafcadio Hearn" 

Shortly after this long letter came the one writ- 
ten by Hearn's Japanese wife, accompanied by 
this note: 

"Dear Miss Effie: Here is my wife's an- 
swer to your most kind letter. She thanks you 



102 



Letters from The Raven 



very much for writing, — says that she knows 
your papa well, by looking at his photograph, 
and by hearing me talk of him; she apologizes 
for not being able to write or speak English; 
she hopes to see you some day, and to be shown 
by you some of the wonders of the Western 
world, about which she knows nothing; she 
tells you about our little son; and finally says 
that if she ever comes to America she will bring 
you some curious memento from Japan. It is 
all written in the old style of high Japanese 
courtesy, in which your letter is called c a jewel- 
pen letter.' Best regards and kindest love for 
your papa. We are going to leave Kumamoto. 

Will write again soon. 

"Lafcadio Hearn" 

In 1 895 an accident befell Mr. Watkin,and,upon 
his request, Mrs. Watkin wrote a letter to the 
distant friend. Mrs. Watkin was rather timid 
about it and was dubious about receiving a re- 
ply. However, despite this feeling, she enclosed 
some little verses of hers upon a spiritual theme. 
In a short time she received the following reply: 



Letters from The Raven 103 

"Kobe; — shimoyamatedori, Shichome 7 
"Feb. 28, 1895 

"Dear Mrs. Watkin: Your kind, sweet letter 
reached me by last American mail, and gave me 
all the pleasure you could have desired. But why 
have you even dreamed of apologizing for writ- 
ing to me, who love you all, and for whom every- 
thing is comprehensible even if not wholly com- 
prehended ? All love and good wishes to you. I 
received the little poem, and liked it. Those mys- 
teries in which you appear to be interested are 
scarcely mysteries in the Far East: the immate- 
rial world counts here for more than the visible. 
Perhaps some day I may suddenly drop in upon 
you all, and talk ghostliness to you, — a new 
ghostliness, which you may like. Some hints of 
it appear in a little book of mine, to be issued 
about the time this letter reaches you, — 'Out of 
the East.' 

"I really think I may see you and my dear 
old Dad again. I may be obliged erelong to re- 
turn, at least temporarily, to America, to make 
some money, though my home must be in Japan 
till my boy grows up a little. He seems to be 
very strong and bright, and queerly enough he is 
fair. I have two souls now, which is troublesome; 



104 



Letters from The Raven 



for his every word and cry stirs strange ripples 
in my own life, and the freedom of being re- 
sponsible only for oneself is over forever for me. 
Whether this be for the worse or the better in the 
eternal order of things, the Gods must decide. 

"I should like to see your new home. The 
other one was very cosy ; but perhaps this is even 
better. What I also want to see is No. 26 Long- 
worth Street, and to hear the ticking of the old 
clock that used to sound like the steps of a long- 
legged man walking on pavement. Effie wrote me 
a dear, pretty letter. Thank her for me. It is just 
about seven years now since I saw Dad. I sup- 
pose he looks now more like Homer than ever. 
.1 have become somewhat grey, and have crow's- 
feet around my eyes. Also I have become fat, 
and disinclined for violent exercise. In other 
words, I 'm getting down the shady side of the 
hill, — and the horizon before me is already dark- 
ening, and the winds blowing out of it, cold. And 
I am not in the least concerned about the enig- 
mas, — except that I wonder what my boy will do 
if I don't live to be nearly as old as Dad. Ever 
with all affectionate regards to him and yourself 
and Effie, 

"Lafcadio Hearn" 



Letters from The Raven 105 

In 1 896 Mr. Watkin, partially recovered from 
his injuries, wrote Hearn a letter, and received a 
last one from him, — a reply in which the writer 
finally placed the seal upon the finest friendship 
in his history. Unlike some of his other attempts 
at prophecy, Hearn's predictions in this last let- 
ter failed to come true. He never saw his old 
friend again, and the old gentleman, at the age 
of eighty-two, now occupies a room in the Old 
Men's Home in Cincinnati, counting among 
his chief treasures the letters which have been 
here presented. 

"Kobe 

" Nakayamatedori 

u y-chome 

" Bangai 1 6 

"May 23, '96 
"Dear Old Dad: How nice to get so dear a 
letter from you! I know the cost to you of writ- 
ing it, and my dear old father must not imagine 
that I do not understand why he cannot write 
often. With his little grey boy it is much the 
same now: he finds it hard to write letters, and 
he has very few correspondents. Why, indeed, 
should he have many? True men are few; and 
the autograph-hunters, and the scheming class 



106 Letters from The Raven 

of small publishers, and the people who want 
gratis information about commercial matters in 
Japan are not considered by him as correspond- 
ents. They never get any answers. I have two 
or three dear friends in this world: is not that 
enough? — you being oldest and dearest. To feel 
that one has them is much. 

"But I must ask many pardons. I fear Miss 
Effie will not forgive me for not acknowledging 
ere now the receipt of a photograph, which sur- 
prised as much as it pleased me. To think of the 
little girl having so developed into the fine se- 
rious woman! How old it makes me feel! for I 
remember Miss Effie when she was so little. 
Please ask her to forgive me. I was away when 
the photograph came (in Kyoto), and when I 
returned, lazily put off writing from day to day. 
There was, however, some excuse for my lazi- 
ness. I have been very sick with inflammation of 
the lungs, and am getting well very slowly. But 
all danger is practically over. 

"I see from the kind letter of protest bearing 
your initials that the idealism which makes love 
has never gone out of your heart when you think 
of me. It is all much more real than any mate- 
rialism ; see, you always predicted that I should 



Letters from The Raven 107 

be able to do something, while extremely prac- 
tical, materialistic people predicted that I should 
end in jail or at the termination of a rope. And 
your prediction seems to have been wiser, — for 
at last, at last I am attracting a little attention in 
England. . . . Also I see (what I did not know be- 
fore) that some people have been writing horrid 
things about me. I expected it, sooner or later, 
as I have been an open enemy of the mission- 
aries; and, besides, the least success in this world 
must be atoned for. The price is heavy. Those 
who ignore you when you are nobody find it 
necessary to hate you when you disappoint their 
expectations. But if I keep my health I need 
not care very much. The incident only brought 
out some of the honey in dear old Dad's heart. 
"You ask about my boy. I can best respond 
by sending his last photo, — nearly three years 
old now. If I can educate him in France or Italy, 
it would be better for him, I think. He is very 
sensitive; and I am afraid of American or Eng- 
lish school training for him. I only pray the Gods 
will spare me till he is eighteen or twenty. I am 
watching to see what he will develop; if he have 
any natural gift, I shall try to cultivate only that 
gift. Ornamental education is a wicked, farcical 



io8 Letters from The Raven 

waste of time. It left me incapacitated to do any- 
thing; and I still feel the sorrow of the sin of 
having dissipated ten years in Latin and Greek, 
and stuff, . . . when a knowledge of some one 
practical thing, and of a modern language or two, 
would have been of so much service. As it is, I 
am only self-taught; for everything I learned in 
school I have since had to unlearn. You helped 
me with some of the unlearning, dear old Dad ! 

" I really expect to see you. You are only sev- 
enty-two, and hale, and I trust you have long 
years before you, and that we shall meet. About 
the business depression, I hear that it is passing 
and that c flush times' are in store for the West. 
This, I trust, will be. Oh, no ! I shall not have 
to look for you 'in the old men's home,' — no, 
I shall see you in your own home, — and talk 
queer talk to you. 

" For the time being (indeed, for two years) I 
have lived altogether by literary work, without 
breaking my little reserves, and it is likely that 
better things are in store for me. I am anxious for 
success, — for the boy's sake above all. To have 
the future of others to make — to feel the respon- 
sibilities — certainly changes the face of life. I 
am always frightened, of course ; but I work and 



Letters from The Raven 109 

hope. That is the best, is it not? Remember me 
to all kind friends. Ask Effie to forgive my rude 
silence, and all yours to believe my love and 
constant remembrance. 

" Lafcadio Hearn 

"I am a Japanese citizen now (Y. Koizumi),— 
adopted into the family of my wife. This settles 
all legal question as to property as well as mar- 
riage under Japanese law; and if I die, the Con- 
sul can't touch anything belonging to my peo- 
ple." 

The rest is silence. 



Letters to a Lady 



Letters to a Lady 

HEREWITH are presented letters that 
were the outgrowth of a friendship that 
probably meant a great deal to Lafcadio Hearn 
at the time. In speaking of them, one inevitably 
thinks of Prosper Merimee's " Lettres a une in- 
connue." The later missives, too, must for years 
to come remain "letters to an unknown," — un- 
known to all save a few persons. It was only re- 
cently that the natural course of events made it 
at all possible to include them in this collection. 
Even now the ban of silence is placed on many 
things we would like to know. 

The letters were written during the memora- 
ble year 1876, marked by exciting political con- 
ventions and an even more exciting national elec- 
tion, and finally by the great Centennial Exposi- 
tion. At this time Hearn was in his twenty-sixth 
year. He had been in the United States for nearly 
six years, and was at the time employed as a re- 
porter on Mr. Murat Halstead's Cincinnati Com- 
mercial. Although he did not like this country 
and was at this time dreaming of returning some 
day to Europe, he had been trying for years to 
make a thoroughly competent newspaper repor- 



H4 Letters to a Lady 

ter of himself. However, we gather from re- 
marks in his letters that he was still regarded as 
only a minor member of the staff. 

Among men his chief friend remained Mr. 
Watkin. If he had any friends among young 
women, he has left no record of them. He seems 
to have been more or less solitary always. He is 
constantly telling of his constraint in social gath- 
erings, of his inability to appear otherwise than 
cold to those around him. Life was indeed to 
him always a curious carnival, in which one 
must be careful to keep on the mask, to guard the 
tongue lest one say something redounding to 
one's injury or discredit. 

With such characteristics, we are therefore at 
a loss to learn how his intimacy with the unknown 
began. It may have had its origin when some 
assignment in the line of newspaper duty took 
him to her home. One fancies the unknown must 
have had a keen eye for character and ability to 
discern anything unusual, anything love-worthy, 
in the ill-dressed, somewhat ill-featured, shy, 
timid, little youth Hearn was at that time. It had 
not heretofore been his good fortune to attract. 
However that may be, the established fact of the 
friendship remains. 



Letters to a Lady 115 

The identity of the unknown is a secret. We 
are told that she was a woman of culture and re- 
finement; that she was possessed of some wealth; 
and, finally, that she was many years older than 
Hearn. 

Merimee has been referred to. The reference 
is forced upon us by Hearn himself. He men- 
tions those famous "Lettres," and says he feels 
toward his "Dear Lady" as Merimee did toward 
his "inconnue." The comparison is not exact. 
Indeed, it is rather a case of contrast. Like Meri- 
mee, Hearn's motto seems to have been, with very 
rare exceptions, "Remember to distrust;" but, 
unlike Merimee, Hearn was not a man of wealth 
and prominence and influence in his native land; 
unlike Merimee, Hearn had not had all the 
advantages wealth and culture can give; unlike 
Merimee, he had known, and was still destined 
to know, hard and bitter years. 

With Merimee, the French stylist par excel- 
lence, impersonality was a passion. His was an 
impersonality that was broken down only in the 
famous "Lettres." Hearn, on the other hand, 
could not help injecting much of himself into his 
books. Nor does the contrast end there. 

" For her first thoughts," as Walter Pater well 



n6 Letters to a Lady 

says of the "Lettres" and the author's attitude 
toward the woman in the case, "Merimee is al- 
ways pleading, but always complaining that he 
gets only her second thoughts, — the thoughts, 
that is, of a reserved, self-limiting nature/' 

In the present collection of letters, the roles 
are reversed. We gather from the letters that it 
was Hearn who never let himself go, who always 
kept himself under cautious restraint, and that 
it was the woman who resented these second 
thoughts, these promptings of careful medita- 
tions rather than of fresh, warm impulses. 

In Merimee the ardent lover alternated with 
the severe critic. Hequarrelled with the unknown 
and then had reconciliations, until at last the old 
love passed away into a form of calm friendship. 
In the meantime he packed his letters with keen 
criticisms of books, society, politics, archaeology, 
noted people, — everything that interested a citi- 
zen of the world. 

In Hearn we have the lonely little egotist, writ- 
ing mainly about himself. In his appreciation of 
a woman's friendship and his pride in her cordial 
admiration, he expands and reveals some part 
of his own thoughts, beliefs, studies. For the rest, 
the connection, on his side at least, seems to have 



Letters to a Lady 117 

been one of platonic friendship. The lady was 
more or less exacting, Hearn being constantly 
occupied in explaining away what she was quick 
to fancy were slights. 

She would seem to have been even more sen- 
sitive than he. To speak plainly, too, there is a 
note of evasion in his letters; despite his appre- 
ciation of her, he seems to have seized upon his 
newspaper work as an excuse for preventing their 
friendship becoming something more intimate. 
He kept things — at least in his letters — upon a 
very formal plane. He was to the recipient, one 
fancies, provokingly distant in his " Dear Lady " 
form of address. There was an ominous sign in 
the constant reference to letters returned or un- 
opened. Indeed, there finally came the breach 
that in the nature of things was inevitable, and 
then all his letters were returned to him. 

The young man did not destroy them. Shortly 
afterwards he departed for the South. It is not a 
little strange that in all the years in New Orleans 
that followed — lean years and fat, years of bit- 
ter poverty and of comparative prosperity — 
Hearn preserved this batch of letters intact. 
When nearing the age of forty and close to that 
period when he was to sail for Japan, the more 



n8 Letters to a Lady 

or less matured man passed judgment upon the 
letters of his youth, found them good,and placed 
them in the keeping of his friend. He told Mr. 
Watkin to do with the faded missives what he 
deemed best. In some fashion he would seem to 
have felt that he was yet destined to accomplish 
something in the world of literature, and to have 
proudly thought that some day even these boy- 
ish screeds would be eagerly read. 

As for these letters, as with most of Hearn's 
missives, they were for the most part undated, — 
written hurriedly on any kind of paper, often on 
mere scraps. 

He places himself before us as the "Oriental 
by birth and half by blood ;" as a lad destined for 
Catholicism,and, instead of that, savagely attack- 
ing the religion of his mother. We have hints of 
the hard measure the world had dealt him and 
how he felt like a barbarian beyond the pale of 
polite society. He confesses himself ill at ease 
among the cultivated classes, and we dimly feel 
that there were in those years, before he came to 
Cincinnati, days so bitter that they left a perma- 
nent mark. Without religious faith, going to the 
boyish extreme of lightly attacking Christianity, 
he imagined himself ready to become a sort of 



Letters to a Lady n 9 

aesthetic pagan, worshipping Venus and the other 
gods of the antique world. As antagonistic to ac- 
cepted pulpit teaching, he read Darwin, and pom- 
pously and not a little solemnly announced, "I 
accept Darwin fully." 

Perhaps no inconsiderable portion of this pa- 
ganism was caused by his youthful worship of 
Swinburne. All young men in the late sixties and 
early seventies, with an ear for verbal music and 
magic, were swearing allegiance to the bard of the 
famous "Poems and Ballads." Indeed, one feels 
that Hearn would have been a poet himself, had 
he but been gifted with the faculty of rhyme. 
Much of the other equipment of the poet was 
his in abundant measure, — the love of beauty, 
the love of lovely words, the joy in the manifold 
things of nature and art. 

Speaking of Swinburne brings us to his read- 
ing, and we catch a glimpse of that little shelf of 
treasured books, — Balzacand Gautier and Rabe- 
lais in the French ; Poe, to be sure; and — strange 
choice — the poems of Mr. Thomas Bailey Al- 
drich. 

In these "Letters to a Lady" there is com- 
paratively little discussion of literary subjects, save 
the mention of the facl that he is reading, always 



120 Letters to a Lady 

reading. Of literary criticism there is but little. 
In one letter, indeed, we do get a reference to 
the character of the Sultana of Aldrich's "Cloth 
of Gold," but this is a moral rather than a lite- 
rary discussion. The sign that he was ranging far 
afield among other men's works, and also the 
hint of the writer that was to be, is given in little 
sentences dropped half unconsciously here and 
there, — sentences that to the student of Hearn's 
letters seem to be characteristic of his ways of 
thought, as when he says, "Somehow the ghosts 
of the letters I write by night laugh in my face 
by day;" or when he speaks of his horror of 
crowds and compares it to the terror of the de- 
sert camel being urged toward the white walls and 
shining minarets of the city beyond the desert; 
or when, curiously enough, he speaks of himself 
as seeming like a lizard in the July sun, a very 
similar turn of thought having been employed 
by Flaubert in one of his letters, which Hearn 
had probably never read, even though he did 
once plan a translation from that author. 

It is only necessary in conclusion to call at- 
tention to one more letter in this section. As a 
matter of plain prose it would seem that the lady 
had complained of the coldness and the dubious 



Letters to a Lady 121 

tone of some of Hearn's letters and had returned 
them to him. In response he wrote to her a fable 
of a Sultan and a neighboring Sultana. He told 
how the Sultana complained of the Sultan's mes- 
sengers, and how the Sultan committed them to 
death by fire. The lady was supposed, from this 
pretty fable, to draw the conclusion that Hearn's 
letters had been destroyed by their author. From 
the collection herewith appended, it can be seen 
that the fabulist availed himself of poetic license. 



Dear Friend: Your last kind letter makes me 
in some sort ashamed of my diffidence and cold- 
ness. Yet you must be aware how peculiarly I feel 
myself situated, — constrained, watched every- 
where by a hundred eyes that know me, hemmed 
in with conventionalities of which I only know 
the value sufficiently to have my nerves on a per- 
petual strain through fear of breaking them. I am 
not by nature cold, — quite the reverse, indeed, 
as many a bitter experience taught me; and I beg 
you to attribute my manner rather to overcau- 
tion than to indifference to the feelings of others. 



122 Letters to a Lady 

Why, do not we all wear masks in this great car- 
nival mummery of life, in which we all dance and 
smile disguisedly, until the midnight of our allot- 
ted pleasure time comes; and the King-Skeleton 
commands, "Masks off — show your skulls"? 
I am afraid you do not understand [me] ; or 
rather, I feel sure you do not wholly, — for you 
have had little opportunity. You have only seen 
me on my best behavior; perhaps you might 
think less of me under other circumstances, but 
never think me a chilly phantom, though you 
may occasionally see me only as the Shadow of 
that which I really am. Have I been rude? Try 
to forgive my rudeness. It was involuntary. . . . 
I think I understood your letters; and I did not 
form any opinion therefrom, I feel sure, which 
you would not have liked. I wish I could be less 
strained and conventional in company. Will try 
my best to do better. Sincerely, 

L. Hearn 



ii 

Dear Friend and Lady (if I may so call you): 
Do not suppose that when I delay answering one 
of your kind letters, the tardiness is attributable 



Letters to a Lady 123 

to neglect or forgetfulness or inappreciation of 
your favor. I thoroughly feel — and feel keenly 
— every kind word or thought you have ex- 
pressed or felt forme; I have never rendered you, 
it is true, a single compliment worthy of those 
I have received, — but only because I was sure 
that you understood my feelings better than if I 
had expressed them; I never write altogether as I 
think, partly because I am not naturally demon- 
strative, and while capable of more than ordi- 
nary sensitive feeling, I have a kind of reluctance 
to take off what I might term my little mask. 
Don't hesitate to scold me, as you threaten, 
should you think I deserve it. . . . 

I have been busy all day among noisy crowds 
of enthusiastic Catholics; and I shudder at the 
thought of entering a crowd at all times, just as 
the desert camel shudders when his driver urges 
him toward the white walls and the shining mina- 
rets of a city sparkling beyond the verge of the 
silent yellow waste. Consequently I was not able 
to write till late; and even now I am not in a 
good writing humor. One's skull becomes peo- 
pled with Dreams and Fantastic Things just be- 
fore daybreak; and if you notice aught foolish 
or absurd in these lines, please attribute them to 



124 Letters to a Lady 

that weird influence which comes on us all — 

"in the dead vast and middle of the night." 
I must make one more visit to the Central Po- 
lice Station ere cockcrow, — poetically speaking. 

Sincerely, 

Laf. Hearn 

hi 

Cincinnati, Thursday, 27, 1876 
Dear Lady: I return by mail the very inter- 
esting letters which you kindly left for my peru- 
sal ; also, the list of Mr. 's collection, where- 
of I have taken a copy. The other collectors 
are so slow in preparing their lists that I fear 
I shall not be able to publish a full account of 
their contributions to the World's Exposition 
for several days yet. ... I am very thankful for 
your assistance in obtaining information regard- 
ing these things. 

As an English subject, and one who feels a 
kind of home interest in European news, you 
may feel assured that the letters from beyond the 
"great water" interested me extremely. 

The author gives a pleasant, realistic, and en- 
tertaining picture of the brilliant social affair 
whereof her letter treats; and her account would 



Letters to a Lady 125 

have done credit to most foreign newspaper cor- 
respondents, speaking from a journalistic point 
of view. . . . 

Believe me very respectfully yours, 

L. Hearn 

IV 

There is a fragment in which is taken up the 
matter of invitations he has refused. It is chiefly 
interesting because of his expressed desire to re- 
turn to Europe: 

"I daily receive and pay no attention what- 
ever to other invitations, because I know my pre- 
sence is only desired for journalistic favors; but 
with you I regret to be unable to accept them 
quite as much as you could. In speaking of im- 
pulses, I refer merely to sudden actions without 
preparation, — such as your first note of yester- 
day; or your action on fancying that I had been 
talking too much; or your becoming vexed at 
me for what I could not help. You ought to know 
that I would do anything in my power to please 
you or to accommodate you. . . . 

"Let me also take this opportunity of thank- 
ing you for those books again. I have been very 



126 Letters to a Lady 

much fascinated by one of them and have not 
only read but re-read it. It is seemingly by some 
strange fatuity that your little invitations have 
latterly fallen on busy days. Last week it was all 
work; and this week I have had a very easy time 
of it. You looked at me yesterday as if I had 
done you some injury, and you hated to see me. 
If you go to Europe, my best wishes go with you. 
I hope to return there, and leave this country 
forever some day in the remote future. 
"Do not be offended at my letter. 

"L. H." 



In a letter dated "Thursday p. m., 1876" we 
find him apologizing for some breach of etiquette. 
He then, as usual, complains of the newspaper 
man's lot: 

"This afternoon I received your kind note. 
One of the misfortunes of a journalistic existence 
is the inability of a newspaper man to fulfil an 
appointment, meet an engagement, or definitely 
accept an invitation not immediately connected 
with his round of regular duty, as he may at 
any moment be ordered to the most outlandish 



Letters to a Lady 127 

places in the pursuit of news. I think, however, 
that I may safely accept your kind invitation to 
dine with you on Sunday at one o'clock p.m., 
and also to ride out to Avondale. Nothing could 
give me greater pleasure; the more so as Sunday 
is an inordinately dull day in the newspaper 
sphere. I will certainly be on hand unless some- 
thing very extraordinary should intervene to 
prevent; and in such event I shall endeavor to 
inform. you beforehand, so as not to cause you 
any trouble. 

"I remain, dear Lady, 

"Very respectfully, 

"L. Hearn" 



VI 



Cincinnati^ Friday^ 1876 
Dear Lady: I very much regret that I should 
have inadvertently worded my last note in so 
clumsy a manner as to make it appear that in ac- 
cepting your kind invitation I was prospectively 
interested in nothing but "items" and thankful 
only for the opportunity of obtaining news. In 
mentioning that I was especially glad to accept 
your invitation on Sunday, "as it is an especially 
dull day for news," I simply meant that I would 



128 Letters to a Lady 

find more leisure time on Sunday than upon any 
other day in the week ; and would thus feel more 
pleasure in making a call without being worried 
by office business. I hope you will therefore con- 
sider my rudeness the result of hurried writing 
and clumsy phraseology rather than of deliberate 
ignorance. 

If it be agreeable to you, I will call upon you 
at i p. m. on Sunday as per invitation. I cannot 
definitely say, however, what I could do in the 
way of writing an account of other collections 
than what have already been spoken of, inasmuch 
as I am, you know, only a reporter in the office, 
and subject to orders from the City Editor. 

As I have not written any letters except of a 
business character for several years, please to ex- 
cuse any apparent lack of courtesy in my note. I 
am apt to say something malapropos without in- 
tending. I remain, 

Very respectfully yours, 

Lafcadio Hearn 



vii 



Dear Lady: Excuse my tardiness in reply- 
ing to your kind and, may I say, too complimen- 



Letters to a Lady 129 

tary letter; for I scarcely deserve the courteous 
interest you have expressed in regard to my- 
self. Also let me assure you that you are very 
much mistaken in fancying that I am so used to 
all kinds of people as to feel no pleasure in such 
introductions as that of Sunday evening. The 
fact is that I was very much pleased; but am so 
poor a hand at compliments that I feared even 

to express to Miss the pleasure I felt in her 

songs and playing, to wish you many happy 
returns of your birthday, or to hint how well 
I enjoyed the conversation of your lady sister. 
I have not visited out since I was sixteen, — nine 
years ago; have led a very hard and extraordi- 
nary life previous to my connection with the 
press, — became a species of clumsy barbarian, — 
and in short for various reasons considered my- 
self ostracized, tabooed, outlawed. These facts 
should be sufficient to explain to you that I am 
not used to all sorts of people, — not to the culti- 
vated class of people at all, and feel all the greater 
pleasure in such a visit as that referred to. . . . 
I have not had time yet to conclude the en- 
tertaining volume of travel you kindly sent me, 
but have read sufficient to interest me extremely. 
I find a vast number of novel and hitherto un- 



130 Letters to a Lady 

published facts, — the results of more than ordi- 
narily keen observation in the work. If I were 
reviewing the book, I might feel inclined to take 
issue with the author in respect to his views con- 
cerning the work of the missionaries inTahiti, — 
who have been, you know, most severely criti- 
cised by radically minded observers; but the 
writer's pictures are clearly defined, realistic, and 
powerfully drawn. I must not waste your time, 
however, with further gossip just now. 
Believe me, dear Lady, 

Very respectfully yours, 

L. Hearn 



VIII 



Dear Lady: I am not so insusceptible to such 
pretty flattery as yours, even though I think it 
undeserved, as to feel otherwise than pleased. Of 
course I am vain enough to be gratified at any- 
thing good said of me by you or your friends. In 
regard to enjoying music and flowers, Iwouldonly 
say that I love everything beautiful, and can only 
look at the social, ethical, or natural world with 
the eyes of a pagan rather than a Christian, re- 
vering the heathen philosophy of aesthetic sense; 



Letters to a Lady 131 

and surely so must all who truly love the antique 
loveliness of the Antique World, which deified all 
fair things and worshipped only those beauties of 
form and sense whereof it brought forth the high- 
est types. But to speak truly, I am afraid of par- 
ties; one's nerves are ever on a painful strain in 
the effort to be agreeable, in the fear of doing 
something gauche, and in the awful perplexity of 
searching for compliments which must fall on the 
ear as vapid and commonplace, — vanity and 
vexation of spirit. Indeed, I much enjoyed the 
little party the other night, because it was a home 
circle; and I did not feel as though people were 
scrutinizing my face, my manners, my dress, or 
criticising my words with severe mental criticism, 
or making the awful discovery that I cc had hands " 
and did not know what to do with them. 

I did not tell you when my vacation should 
commence, because I did not know myself; in- 
deed, I do not yet know. Our vacations gene- 
rally commence about June, when each one in 
turn takes a couple or three weeks' travel and 
rest; but as I am the youngest and freshest 
(in the sense of inexperience) of the staff, I 
suppose I will have to wait my turn until the 
others have decided. Some like to escape the hot 



132 Letters to a Lady 

weather. I love hot weather, — the hotter the 
better. I feel always like a lizard in the July 
sun; and when the juice of the poison plants is 
thickest and the venomous reptiles most active ) 
then I, too, feel life most enjoyable, as "Elsie 
Venner" did. Therefore I may have to wait for 
my vacation till the golden autumn cometh; but 
I will endeavor to get away so soon as I can, and 
will let you know just so soon as I know myself. 
Very respectfully yours, dear Lady, 

Lafcadio Hearn 



IX 



Cincinnati, May 9, 1876 
Dear Lady: I am at once gratified and sur- 
prised to find that my little article should have 
given you so much pleasure. Had I not been 
very busy with a mass of matter-of-facl work last 
evening, I should have done better justice to 

Mr. 's splendid collection. That was a very 

unfortunate mistake of mine in regard to his 
name, but I shall try to correct it. 

In regard to mentioning Mr. 's name, 

I desire to say to you, in strict confidence, that 
I purposely omitted it for prudential reasons. 
Newspapers are very jealous of their employes 



Letters to a Lady 133 

in the matter of giving compliments ; and I feared 
that further mention just at this time might ren- 
der it all the more difficult for me to do you a 
reportorial kindness on some future occasion. 
This may seem odd; but one outside the news- 
paper circle can have no idea how particular 
newspaper proprietors are. 

With regard to my article, dear Lady, I would 
say, in reply to your kind query, that you are 
welcome to use it as you please. I only -regret 
the lack of time to have improved it before it 
appeared in the Commercial. My love for things 
Oriental need not surprise you, as I happen to 
be an Oriental by birth and half by blood. 

I cannot definitely answer you in regard to 
the prospective country visit, so courteously pro- 
posed, until I see you again or hear from you. I 
fear I shall have to postpone the pleasure until 
the regular reporters' vacation time, — that is, if 
it should necessitate absence from duty for any 
considerable length of time. However, you can 
explain further when I again have the pleasure 
of seeing you; and if I can possibly get away, I 
will be only too glad of so pleasant a holiday. 
Very respectfully and gratefully, 

L. Hearn 



i34 Letters to a Lady 



Dear Lady: If I disappointed you last even- 
ing, be sure that I myself was much more disap- 
pointed, especially as I had to pass within a 
stone's throw of your house without going in. I 
believe that if you only knew how frightfully 
busy we all are, you would have postponed the 
invitation until next week, when I shall have 
some leisure and hope to see you. I had expected 
up to the last moment to be able to call, if only 
for an hour; but a sudden appointment put it 
out of my power. The convention is keeping us 
all as busy as men can be. 

I see you returned my letter. I know it was 
not a satisfactory one. Somehow the ghosts of 
the letters I write by night laugh in my face by 
day. I either talk too freely or write too hur- 
riedly. I will not certainly give your books away, 
for I prize them highly and am delighted with 
them. I had thought they were only lent. They 
now nestle on my book-shelf along with a copy 
of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques," illustrated by 
Dore, Gautier's most Pre-Raphael and wicked- 
est work, Swinburne, Edgar Poe, Rabelais, Al- 
drich, and some other odd books which form my 



Letters to a Lady 135 

library. I generally read a little before going to 
bed. 

I hope to visit your farm indeed, but the 
journalist is a creature who sells himself for a 
salary. He is a slave to his master, and must 
await the course of events. 

No; you must not pity me or feel sorry for 
me. What would you do if I were to write you 
some of my up-and-down experiences and absur- 
dities? And you cannot be of service to me ex- 
cept I were suddenly to lose everything and not 
know where to turn. Now I am doing very well, 
and would be doing better but for an esca- 
pade. . . . 

Of course I will write you in P — ; I should 
like nothing better, feeling towards you like 
Prosper Merimee to his "inconnue." I wish I 
could make my letters equally interesting. 

I do not think that I am unfortunate in life, 
and yet I have done everything to make me so. 
If you only knew some of my follies, you would 
cease perhaps to like me. Some day I will confide 
some of my oddities to you. But don't think me 
unfortunate because I am a skeptic. 

Skepticism is hereditary on my father's side. 
My mother, a Greek woman, was rather rever- 



136 Letters to a Lady 

ential; she believed in the Oriental Catholicism, 
— the Byzantine fashion of Christianity which 
produced such hideous madonnas and idiotic- 
looking saints in stained glass. I think being 
skeptical enables one to enjoy life better, — to 
live like the ancients without thought of the 
Shadow of Death. I was once a Catholic, — at 
least, my guardians tried to make me so, but 
only succeeded in making me dream of all priests 
as monsters and hypocrites, of nuns as goblins 
in black robes, of religion as epidemic insanity, 
useful only in inculcating ethics in coarse minds 
by main force. Afterwards it often delighted me 
to force a controversy upon some priest, deny 
his basis of belief, and find him startled to dis- 
cover that he could not attempt to establish it 
logically. 

You say," What else is there" but faith to make 
life pleasant? Why, the majority of things that 
faith despises. I fancy if one will only try to ana- 
lyze the amount of comfort derived from Chris- 
tianity by himself, he will find the candid an- 
swer. Whence come all our arts, our loves, our 
luxuries, our best literature, our sense of man- 
hood to do and dare, our reverence or respect 
for Woman, our sense of beauty, our sense of 



Letters to a Lady 137 

humanity? Never from Christianity. From the 
antique faiths, the dead civilizations, the lost 
Greece and Rome, the warrior-creed of Scandi- 
navia, the Viking's manhood and reverence for 
woman, — his creator and goddess. Yet all faiths 
surely have their ends in shaping and perfecting 
this electrical machine of the human mind, and 
preparing the field of humanity for a wider har- 
vest of future generations, long after the worms, 
fed from our own lives, have ceased to writhe 
about us, as the serpents writhe among the grin- 
ningmasks of stone on the columns of Persepolis. 
How you must be bored by so long a letter! 

[ The letter is signed by a drawing of the raven, familiar 
in the letters to Mr. Wat kin.'] 



XI 



Dear Lady: There once lived an Eastern Sul- 
tan who reigned over a city fairer than far Sa- 
marcand. He dwelt in a gorgeous palace of the 
most bizarre and fantastically beautiful Saracenic 
design, — columns of chalcedony andgold-veined 
quartz, of onyx and sardonyx, of porphyry and 
jasper, upheld fretted arches of a fashion love- 
lier than the arches of the Mosque of Cor- 



138 Letters to a Lady 

dova. There were colonnades upon colonnades, 
domes rising above courts where silver fountains 
sang the songs of the Water-Spirit; here were 
minarets whose gilded crescents kissed the azure 
heaven; there were eunuchs, officers, execution- 
ers, viziers, odalisques, women graceful of form 
as undulating flame. 

In a neighboring kingdom dwelt a sultry -eyed 
Sultana, — a daughter of sunrise, shaped of fire 
and snow, impulsive, generous, and far more po- 
tent than the Sultan. Either desired to become 
the friend of the other, but either feared to cross 
the line of purple hills which separated the king- 
dom. But they held communication by messen- 
gers. The Sultana's messengers always spoke the 
truth, yet scarcely spoke plainly, having great 
faith in diplomatic suggestion rather than in 
blunt and forcible utterance. The Sultan's mes- 
sengers, on the other hand, only spoke half of the 
truth, being fearful lest their words should be 
overheard by the keen ears of men who desired 
that no courtesies should be exchanged between 
their mistress and her neighboring brother. At 
last the Sultana became wroth with a great wrath 
at the messengers, forasmuch as they conversed 
only in enigmas, the Sultana being apparently 



Letters to a Lady 139 

quite unable to imagine why they should so 
speak. Therefore the Sultana bound the messen- 
gers, stripped them naked, and, placing them in 
bags, despatched them by a camel caravan to the 
Sultan, expressing much anger at the conduct of 
the messengers. The Sultan, being alarmed at 
the detention of his messengers, knowing their 
proverbial loquacity, and fearing they had turned 
traitors, thanked Allah for their return, and 
swore by the Beard of his Father that ere sun- 
rise they should die the death of cravens, inas- 
much as they had not fulfilled their duty satis- 
factorily. He decided that they should be burnt 
with fire, and their ashes cast into the waters of 
the great river — 

"sweeping down 
Past carven pillars, under tamarisk groves 
To where the broad sea sparkled" 

" Kara-Mustapha," exclaimed the Sultan to his 
trusty vizier, "I desire the death of these dogs. 
May their fathers' graves be everlastingly defiled! 
Let them be burnt even as we burn the bones 
of the unclean beast. Let them be consumed in 
the furnaces of thy kitchen, that my viands may 
partake of a sweeter flavor." And so they died. 
Meanwhile the Sultana repented of her wrath 



140 Letters to a Lady 

against the messengers, and despatched a sable 
eunuch in all haste to save them. But the eunuch 
arrived before midday, while the prince was yet 
in his harem dreaming of satiny-skinned houris 
and the flowers of the valley of Nourjahad, the 
fruits of the golden-leaved vines of Paradise, and 
the honeyed lips of the daughters of the prophet, 
which make mad those who kiss them with the 
madness of furious love. And the prince, being 
aroused by his favorite odalisque, lifted up his 
eyes and beheld the eunuch there standing with 
a message from the Sultana. And reading the 
message he fell from the tapestried couch upon 
the floor, exclaiming, "May all the Ghouls de- 
vour my father's bones, and may they tear and 
devour me when next I visit my mother's grave ! 
By the beard of Allah, those messengers are not; 
they have died the dog's death, and have van- 
ished even as the smoke of a narghile vanisheth." 
And a soft wind from the sensuous rosy-skied 
South toyed and caressed the volatile dust of the 
bones of the messengers ; the dust fructified flowers 
of intoxicating perfume, and the spirit of the mes- 
sengers melted into the glory of Paradise. There 
is but one God — Mahomet is his prophet. 
[This is signed by a crescent and with L and H interwoven.^ 



Letters to a Lady 141 

XII 

Dear Lady: I felt glad for divers reasons on re- 
ceiving your letter and the little parcel, — firstly, 
because I felt that you were not very angry at 
my foolish fable; and secondly, because I always 
feel happy on having something nice to read. I 
had already read considerable of Darwin's "Voy- 
ages;'' but just now I happened to desire a work 
of just that kind in order to educate myself in 
regard to certain ethnological points. I accept 
Darwin fully. 

I do not believe inGod — neither god of Greece 
nor of Rome nor any other god. I do indeed re- 
vere Woman as the creator, and I respect — yes, I 
almost believe in — the graceful Hellenic anthro- 
pomorphism which worshipped feminine soft- 
ness and serpentine fascination and intoxicating 
loveliness in the garb of Venus Anadyomene. 
Yes, I could almost worship Aphrodite arisen, 
were there another renaissance of the antique 
paganism; and I feel all through me the spirit of 
that exquisite idolatry expressed in Swinburne's 
ode to "Our Lady of Pain." But I do not be- 
lieve in Christ or in Christianity, — the former is 
not a grand character in my eyes, even as a myth ; 



142 Letters to a Lady 

the latter I abhor as antagonistic to art, to na- 
ture, to passion, and to justice. As Theophile 
Gautier wrote, "I have never gathered passion- 
flowers on the rocks of Calvary; and the river 
which flows from the flank of the Cross, making 
a crimson girdle about the world, has never 
bathed me with its waves." 

I always take good care of books, and will re- 
turn these you have so kindly lent me in a week 
or two. 

Dear Lady, I am very anxious to be able to 
write that I have a week's freedom or a fortnight's 
holiday; and I promise you to let you know as 
soon as possible. But as yet I cannot leave my dull 
office, — the convention keeps us awfully busy. I 
would see you very often were it possible; but 
I never have more than a few hours' leisure daily. 

XIII 

I have still your letter, — I fancied it might 
be asked for again, but I do not like to return 
it, dear Lady, — I had rather make a Gheber sa- 
crifice, and immolate Eros, a smiling and willing 
victim, to the White Lord of Fire. 

No, I did not think the Sultana wicked ; for 



Letters to a Lady 143 

I hold naught in human action to be evil save 
that which brings sorrow or pain to others. But 
even suppose the Sultana wicked for the sake of 
argument: her pretty and yet needless apology 
for the supposed mischief done was so tender, 
delicate, and uniquely fantastic that it would 
have earned the pardons supplicated for by ten 
thousand such peccadilloes. I could not forget 
it any more than I could forget the curves about 
the carved lips of the sweet Medicean Venus; 
it was a psychical blush of which the peculiar 
ruddiness made one long to see its twin. 

This morning I found within my room a per- 
fumed parcel, daintily odorous, containing di- 
verse wonderful things, including a crystal ves- 
sel of remarkably peculiar design, very beautiful 
and very foreign. I thought of filling it with black 
volcanic wines, choleric and angry wine, in or- 
der to stimulate my resolution to the point of 
chiding the sender right severely. But the style 
of the vessel forbade; it was ruddily clear in the 
stained design, and icily brilliant elsewhere; it 
suggested the cold purity of a northern land, — 
fresh sea-breezes, fair hair, coolness of physical 
temperature. I concluded that nothing stronger 
than good brown ale would look at home therein; 



144 Letters to a Lady 

and this beverage provoketh good-nature. 

I don't know how to reproach the author of 
this present properly. I shall not attempt it now. 
But I will certainly beg and entreat that I may 
not be favored with any more such kindnesses. 
I don't merit them, and feel the reverse of plea- 
sant by accepting them. Why I don't know, but 
I never like to get presents some way or other. 
It is remarkably odd and pretty; so was the let- 
ter which accompanied it. 



XIV 

Dear Lady: Notwithstanding your threat to 
leave my letters unopened, I will venture to write 
you a few lines. I think that you have mis- 
judged me; and while fancying that I was treat- 
ing you unkindly, you actually treated me some- 
what unfairly, — without, of course, intending it. 
You have acted throughout, or nearly so, upon 
sudden impulse, which was injudicious; and when 
you found me acting in the opposite extreme, the 
necessary lack of sympathy in our actions prompt- 
ed you to believe that I was "heartless." Now I 
can fully sympathize with your impulsiveness be- 



Letters to a Lady i 45 

cause I have had similar impulses; but I have 
been forced to control such impulses by the cau- 
tion learned of unpleasant experiences. I will run 
no risks that could involveyou or me, — especially 
you. I did not for one instant (and you only as- 
serted the contrary through a spirit of mischievous 
reproach) think that I could not trust you with 
my letters. But I could not trust the letters. . . . 
I did not accept your last invitation only be- 
cause I could not: it was of all weeks the busi- 
est. I did not visit your home yesterday, because 
I had an assignment at the same hour in the east 
end, for the purpose of examining a smoke-con- 
sumer. If you had written me the day before, I 
could have made proper arrangements to come. 
You must think me capable of a little meanness 
to suppose that I would be discourteous enough 
to desire a revanche for your impulsive expres- 
sion of an impulse. I understand why you re- 
turned my letter, and I could not feel offended. 



xv 



Dear Lady: You must not ask me to forgive 
you, because I have nothing to forgive; and you 



146 Letters to a Lady 

must not speak of my being angry with you, 
because I was not angry with you at all. I wrote 
sharply, and perhaps disagreeably, because I felt 
that to do so would most speedily relieve you 
from your embarrassment; and sympathized suf- 
ficiently with your error to suffer with you. I en- 
tered into your feelings much more thoroughly, 
I believe, than you had any idea of, and I only 
deferred writing last night because I was fairly 
tired out with hard work. I have made many mis- 
takes similar to yours; and felt similar regrets; 
and felt my face burn as though pricked with ten 
thousand needles, even when lying in bed in the 
dark, to think that a friend had betrayed some 
tender little confidence which might be turned 
into sinister ridicule. I was very, very sorry to 
feel that you had suffered similarly. 

So, dear Lady, I feel generally very reluctant to 
unbosom myself on paper, not knowing who 
might behold the exposition, and sneer at it with- 
out being capable of understanding it.Weall have 
two natures, — the one is our every-day garb of 
mannerism; the other we strived to keep draped, 
like a snow-limbed statue of Psyche, half guarded 
from unaesthetic eyes by a semi-diaphanous veil., 
This veiled nature is delicate as the wings of a 



Letters to a Lady 147 

butterfly, the gossamer web visible only when 
the sunlight catches it, or the frost-flowers on a 
window-pane. It will bear no rude touches — no 
careless handling. It is tenderer than the mythic 
blossom which bled when plucked, and its very 
tenderness enhances its capacity for suffering. 

You may hear many things which on the im- 
pulse of the moment might affect you unplea- 
santly J but you need never yield to such an im- 
pulse. I am very well known in the city; and 
you might often hear people speak of me, but 
you must not think foolish things, or dream an- 
noying dreams therefor. . . . 

What a funny little bundle of pretty contra- 
dictions your letter is ! How can I answer it? By 
word of pen? No, not at all. I must only say 
that I like you quite as much — well, at least 
nearly as much — as you say that you wish. I 
won't say "quite," because I don't know myself, 
and how can I yet know you? 

Ionikoe 



XVI 



Dear Lady, — I remember having once been 
severely chided by a hoary friend of mine — a 



148 Letters to a Lady 

white-bearded Mentor — because I had just re- 
ceived a present from a friend, and had impul- 
sively exclaimed, "Do tell me what I shall give 
him in return! " "Give in return!" quoth Men- 
tor. "What for? — to destroy your little obli- 
gations of gratitude? — to insult your friend by 
practically intimating that you believe he ex- 
pected something in return? Don't send him 
anything save thanks." Well, I didn't. But when 
I received your exquisite little gift this morning, 
I thought of writing, "How can I return your 
kindness," &c; and now, calling my old friend's 
advice to mind, I shall only say, "Thanks, dear 
Lady." Still, flowers and me \_sic~\ have so little 
in common, that much as I love them, I feel I 
ought not to be near them, — just as one who 
loves a woman so passionately that his dearest 
wish is to kiss her footprints; or as Kingsley's 
Norseman, who threw himself at the feet of the 
fair-haired priestess, crying, "Trample on me! 
spit on me! I am not worthy to be trod upon 
by your feet." Of course this is an extravagant 
simile; but the nature of a man is so coarse and 
rude compared with the fragrance and beauty of 
the flowers, that he feels in a purer atmosphere 
when they are breathing perfume about him. 



Letters to a Lady 149 

Flowers do seem to me like ghosts of maidens, 
like "that maid whom Gwydion made by gla- 
mour out of flowers." 

Just fancy! — I was smoking a very poor ci- 
gar when the basket of blossoms came up to my 
rooms; and the odor of tobacco in the presence 
of the flowers seemed sacrilegious. I felt like the 
toad in Edgar Fawcett's poem. Perhaps you do 
not know that little poem, as it has not yet been 
published in book form. So I will quote it; but 
do not think me sentimental. 

"To a Toad 

" Blue dusk, that brings the dewy hours, 
Brings thee, of graceless form in sooth, 
Dark stumbler at the roots of flowers, 
Flaccid, inert, uncouth. 

u Right ill can human wonder guess 
Thy meaning or thy mission here, 
Gray lump of mottled cla?nminess — 
With that preposterous leer! 

"But when I see thy dull bulk where 
Luxurious roses bend and burn, 
Or some slim lily lifts to air 
Her frail and fragrant urn, — 



150 Letters to a Lady 

" Of these, among the garden ways. 
So grim a watcher dost thou seem 
'That I, with meditative gaze 
Look down on thee and dream 



u Of thick-lipped slaves, with ebon skin^ 
That squat in hideous dumb repose 
And guard the drowsy ladies in 
Their still seraglios" 

And talking of little roses, luxurious roses, 1 like 
them because of the fancies they evoke; their 
leaves and odor seem of kinship to the lips and 
the breath of a fair woman, — the lips of a woman 
humid with fresh kisses as the heart of the rose is 
humid with dews, — lips curled like the petals of 
the pink flower, recalling those of Swinburne's 
"Faustine" — 

" Curled lips, long since half kissed away, 
Still sweet and keen." 

Dear lady, you sent me a very aesthetic pre- 
sent; and I fear I have written you a very sen- 
timental letter. But if you don't want such effu- 
sions, you must not send me such flowers. I re- 
ceived your last few lines, and feel much relieved 
to find I have not offended you by my foolish 



Letters to a Lady 151 

letter. I cannot sit down late at night without 
saying something outrageous ; and I must be pos- 
sessed by the Devil of Heterophemy. 

Very sincerely yours, 

L. Hearn 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

"AFTER this perhaps you will recognize the 
jlV signature Ozias Midwinter. It was taken 
from Wilkie Collins's 'Armadale.'" This brief 
postal-card message to his friend, Mr. Henry 
Watkin, written from New Orleans, November 
15,1 877, is the valuable clue that leads to a dis- 
covery of a vein of work done by Lafcadio Hearn, 
— work that perhaps in after years he came to 
scorn, if not to forget. But for this information, 
imparted to a friend by Hearn himself, the "Let- 
ters of Ozias Midwinter" would doubtless lie un- 
disturbed in their dusty tomb, — the files of the 
newspaper ofyester-year.There may be those who 
will decry this resurrection of forgotten things; 
who will say it was the hack-work of a starving 
man; that it were better left undisturbed. They 
have a right to their opinion. Nevertheless, with 
due respect to them, there are things in these 
letters as good as anything Hearn ever wrote. 
More than that, they reveal the whole trend of 
his mind; they foreshadow the things that were 
to interest him in the West Indies and in Japan, 
— the little mysteries of life, the poetry of names, 
the melody of folk-songs, the fascination of old 



156 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

things. The very adoption of the name of Ozias 
Midwinter is significant. Already at twenty-seven 
Hearn was too true a critic of real literature to 
imagine for a moment that "Armadale" was a 
book that was worth while; but there were things 
in this practically forgotten story that appealed 
to him with peculiar force, things that to him 
seemed almost as if they might have been writ- 
ten concerning himself. Hearn at times felt that 
his very name was ugly. In "Armadale" we read, 
"the strangely uncouth name of Ozias Mid- 
winter; "and again: "It is so remarkably ugly that 
it must be genuine. No sane human being would 
assume such a name as Ozias Midwinter." 

His diminutive appearance was a sore point 
with Hearn. "Armadale" depicts Midwinter as 
"young and slim and undersized." 

There was something foreign-looking about 
Hearn. His fictional hero was thus described: 
" His tawny complexion, his large bright brown 
eyes, and his black beard gave him something 
of a foreign look. ... His dusky hands were 
wiry and nervous." 

Hearn, by reason of the peculiar appearance 
of his eyes, more often repelled than attracted 
people. He could therefore sympathize with 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 157 

Midwinter, who says : " I produced a disagreeable 
impression at first sight. I could n't mend it after- 
wards." 

A few more quotations will complete the pic- 
ture and further make clear the fascination this 
character in a poor novel had for Hearn. The 
latter was from the start remarkably shy. He 
avoided the generality of men. For years he had 
been a failure in life. Everything he had tried 
had somehow fallen far below his expectations. 
Indeed, at the very time he was writing the Mid- 
winter letters he was tramping the streets, going 
from newspaper office to office in New Orleans 
seeking work. Let us see now how these things 
in the life of Hearn correspond with the descrip- 
tion of Midwinter : " From first to last the man's 
real character shrank back with a savage shyness 
from the rector's touch." 

And again: "It mattered little what he tried: 
failure (for which nobody was ever to blame but 
himself) was sure to be the end of it, sooner or 
later. Friends to assist him he had none to ap- 
ply to; and as for relations, he wished to be ex- 
cused from speaking of them. For all he knew 
of them they might be dead, and for all they 
knew he might be dead." 



158 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

Andfinally:" Ozias Midwinter at twenty spoke 
of his life as Ozias Midwinter at seventy might 
have spoken, with a long weariness of years on 
him which he had learned to bear patiently." 

So much for the pseudonym. Now for the work 
to which it was attached. In after years, when 
Hearn had begun to attain a degree of prospe- 
rity, he either forgot something of the hard days, 
or, for some reason known to himself, told a 
pleasing fiction about them. Thus, in one letter 
that was made public shortly after his death, he 
says he went South from Cincinnati on a vaca- 
tion, saw the blue and gold of Southern days, and 
determined to abide in such a climate forever. It 
has already been made clear in his letters to Mr. 
Watkin that he went South because the wander- 
lust was upon him, because he had begun to hate 
Cincinnati, because he felt that he must find more 
congenial work elsewhere. Whatever enthusiasts 
in Cincinnati and New Orleans may say now, he 
was not a good reporter in the present-day ac- 
ceptance of the term. There was, on his part, a 
fancy for fine writing, for rhetoric, which the 
city editors of three decades ago may have ad- 
mired, but which at present would be most vi- 
gorously blue-pencilled. A youthful Hearn to- 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 159 

day would have a rather hard time in Cincinnati, 
where the cry is for facts and again facts, and then 
for brevity and then once more for brevity. If 
Hearn did not come up to the modern standards 
of newspaper reporting, neither did he come up 
to the modern ideals of newspaper correspond- 
ence. It is probable that few papers to-day would 
tolerate the particular kind of "news letter" that 
Hearn sent to the Cincinnati Commercial in the 
years 1877 and 1878. It was in a day when the 
telegraph service was not so well developed as at 
present, and the news letters from Washington, 
Boston, New York, New Orleans, and London 
were a regular feature. There are few newspapers 
to-day which contain letters by men so eminent 
in after years as two of the Commercial corre- 
spondents became, — Hearn and Moncure D. 
Conway, also for some time a resident of Cin- 
cinnati and afterwards correspondent from Lon- 
don. 

Few if any of H earn 's " news letters " made any 
pretence at giving news. As far as the style of 
them was concerned, they might have been writ- 
ten for his friend Watkin alone, instead of for a 
great Ohio valley newspaper, catering to a con- 
siderable clientele. He chose what subjects inter- 



160 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

ested him, not what were presumed to interest 
the readers of the paper. Indays when Louisiana's 
political affairs were still in the turmoil of the 
reconstruction period, when the North was still 
keenly watching events in the "rebel" South, 
Hearn had few if any references to these matters. 

As near an approach as any to a news letter was 
his first one, sent from Memphis, November 6, 
1877, when he wrote some "Notes on Forrest's 
Funeral." In this he related how he saw the fu- 
neral of General N. B. Forrest, the great Con- 
federate cavalryman, told some anecdotes of the 
dead man's bravery and savagery, and gave his 
ancestry and an outline of his life. 

Then he proceeded: "Old citizens of Mem- 
phis mildly described him to me as a c terror.' He 
would knock a man down upon the least provo- 
cation, and whether with or without weapons, 
there were few people in the city whom he could 
not worst in a fight. Imagine a man about six 
feet three inches in height, very sinewy and ac- 
tive, with a vigorous, rugged face, bright grey 
eyes that almost always look fierce, eyebrows 
that seem always on the verge of a frown, and 
dark brown hair and chin beard, with strong 
inclination to curl, and you have some idea of 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 161 

Forrest's appearance before his last illness. He 
was, further, one of the most arbitrary, imperious, 
and determined men that it is possible to con- 
ceive of holding a high position in a civilized 
community. Rough, rugged, desperate, uncul- 
tured, his character fitted him rather for the life of 
the borderer than the planter; he seemed by nature 
a typical pioneer, — one of those fierce and ter- 
rible men who form in themselves a kind of pro- 
tecting fringe to the borders of white civilization." 
This is straightforward and vivid enough. But 
it was impossible for this dreamer of weird dreams 
to go through a whole letter in this fashion, and 
so we have the following, which, well written as it 
is, would scandalize the modern telegraph editor 
handling the correspondence: "The same night 
they buried him, there came a storm. From the 
same room whence I had watched the funeral, I 
saw the Northern mists crossing the Mississippi 
into Arkansas like an invading army; then came 
grey rain, and at last a fierce wind, making wild 
charges through it all. Somehow or other the 
queer fancy came to me that the dead Confederate 
cavalrymen, rejoined by their desperate leader, 
were fighting ghostly battles with the men who 
died for 'the Union." 



162 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

The hustling, bustling Memphis of to-day 
is a far different place from the decayed, war- 
stricken town that the vagrant newspaper man 
saw. Its ruin, its damp days and nights, depressed 
him. In a letter of November 23, 1877, he re- 
corded his impressions in a way that would doubt- 
less to-day appeal strongly to the memory of the 
older generation of Memphians, who have not 
become used to the new order of things: 

"The antiquity of the name of Memphis — 
a name suggesting vastness and ruin — compels 
something of a reverential feeling; and I ap- 
proached the Memphis of the Mississippi dream- 
ing solemnly of the Memphis of the Nile. I 
found the great cotton mart truly Egyptian in 
its melancholy decay, and not, therefore, wholly 
unworthy of its appellation. Tenantless ware- 
houses with shattered windows; poverty-stricken 
hotels that vainly strive to keep up appearances; 
rows of once splendid buildings, from whose fa- 
cades the paint has almost all scaled off; mock 
stone fronts, whence the stucco has fallen in 
patches, exposing the humble brick reality un- 
derneath ;dinginess, dirt, and dismal dilapidation 
greet the eye at every turn. The city's life seems 
to have contracted about its heart, leaving the 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 163 

greater portion of its body paralyzed. Its com- 
mercial pulse appears to beat very feebly. It gives 
one the impression of a place that had been 
stricken by some great misfortune beyond hope 
of recovery. Yet Memphis still handles one fifth 
of the annual cotton crop, — often more than a 
million bales in a season, — and in this great 
branch of commerce the city will always hold 
its own, though fine buildings crumble and debts 
accumulate and warehouses lie vacant. . . . But 
when rain and white fogs come, the melancholy 
of Memphis becomes absolutely Stygian: all 
things wooden utter strange groans and crac- 
kling sounds; all things of stone or of stucco 
sweat as in the agony of dissolution, and beyond 
the cloudy brow of the bluffs the Mississippi flows 
dimly, — a spectral river, a Styx-flood, with pale 
mists lingering like Shades upon its banks, wait- 
ing for that ghostly ferryman, the wind." 

In this letter occurred a quaint passage, illus- 
trating at the same time the wide range of Hearn's 
reading and the curious paths into which he had 
allowed his mind to stray: " Elagabalus, wish- 
ing to obtain some idea of the vastness of impe- 
rial Rome, ordered all the cobwebs in the city 
to be collected together and heaped up before 



1 64 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

him. Estimated by such a method, the size of 
Memphis would appear vast enough to have as- 
tonished even Elagabalus." 

However, brief as was his stay in Memphis, 
disagreeable as were most of his impressions, he 
found time to fall in love with one little piece 
of sculpture, thus charmingly described as "a lit- 
tle nude Venus at the street fountain, who has 
become all of one dusky greyish-green hue, 
preserving her youth only in the beauty of her 
rounded figure and unwrinkled comeliness of 
face." In this letter he detailed something of his 
journey down the river, chronicled his delight 
in the Southern sunsets, and finally arrived at the 
first of his promised lands: "The daylight faded 
away, and the stars came out, but that warm glow 
in the southern horizon only paled so that it 
seemed a little further off. The river broadened 
till it looked, with the tropical verdure of its 
banks, like the Ganges, until at last there loomed 
up a vast line of shadows, dotted with points of 
light, and through a forest of masts and a host 
of phantom-white river boats and a wilderness of 
chimneys the 'Thompson Dean, singing her cheery 
challenge, steamed up to the mighty levee of 
New Orleans." 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 165 

In his next letter, dated November 26, 1877, 
he described his first impressions "at the gates 
of the Tropics." He came across things that re- 
minded him of London and of Paris and evoked 
memories of his youth: 

" Eighteen miles of levee ! London, with all the 
gloomy vastness of her docks and her c river of 
ten thousand masts,' can offer no spectacle so 
picturesquely attractive and so varied in the at- 
traction. "Andagain:" Canal Street, withits grand 
breadth and imposing facades, gives one recol- 
lections of London and Oxford Street and Re- 
gent Street." He went to the French market, 
still one of the great sights of the city, and could 
not write enough about it: 

"The markets of London are less brightly 
clean and neatly arranged; the markets of Paris 
are less picturesque." Even a cotton-press seen 
at the cotton landing was an event to be cele- 
brated. The thing was to him not merely a piece 
of ingenious machinery ; it was something weird, 
something demoniac: "Fancy a monstrous head 
of living iron and brass, fifty feet high from its 
junction with the ground, having jointed gaps in 
its face like Gothic eyes, a mouth five feet wide, 
opening six feet from the mastodon teeth in the 



1 66 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

lower jaw to the mastodon teeth in the upper 
jaw. The lower jaw alone moves, as in living be- 
ings, and it is worked by two vast iron tendons, 
long and thick and solid as church pillars. The 
surface of this lower jaw is equivalent to six 
square feet. The more I looked at the thing, the 
more I felt as though its prodigious anatomy had 
been studied after the anatomy of some extinct 
animal, — the way those jaws worked, the man- 
ner in which those muscles moved. Men rolled 
a cotton bale to the mouth of the monster. The 
jaws opened with a low roar, and so remained. 
The lower jaw had descended to the level with 
the platform on which the bale was lying. It was an 
immense plantation bale. Two black men rolled 
it into the yawning mouth. The titan muscles 
contracted, and the jaws closed, silently, steadily, 
swiftly. The bale flattened, flattened, flattened 
down to sixteen inches, twelve inches, eight 
inches, five inches, — positively less than five 
inches! I thought it was going to disappear al- 
together. But after crushing it beyond five inches 
the jaw remained stationary and the monster 
growled like rumbling thunder. I thought the 
machine began to look as hideous as one of those 
horrible yawning heads which formed the gates 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 167 

of the teocallis at Palenque, and through whose 
awful jaws the sacrificial victims passed." 

On December 7, 1877, he dived into more se- 
rious and even more practical things. This man, 
to whom colored races were always of the deep- 
est interest, who had prowled around the negro 
quarters ofCincinnati for songs and melodies and 
superstitions, around the Chinese laundries for 
chance discoveries of strange musical instruments 
from the Orient, after a residence in the South 
of one month, discussed a question which is still 
agitating the country and which threatens to 
trouble it for many years to come, — the negro 
question. Charles Gayarre of Louisiana had writ- 
ten an article for the North American Review en- 
titled "The Southern Question." Hearn, who 
certainly cannot be accused of prejudice against 
colored peoples, agreed with the Southern writer 
that white supremacy was necessary for Southern 
peace and prosperity. He felt that the particular 
menace of the whites was from the mixed breeds, 
whose black blood had just enough alloy to make 
them despise the simplicity and faithfulness of 
the lowly "darky" of the old regime and aspire 
to more rights and more privileges. Recently a 
Southern thinker has written a book to show that, 



1 68 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

in the inexorable law of the survival of the fit- 
test, the ten million negroes must be swept aside 
by the seventy million whites of this land, and 
finally perish from the face of the earth, as do 
all the weaker races. Nearly three decades ago 
Hearn came to the same conclusion, — a conclu- 
sion not expressed without some feeling of fond- 
ness for the race: "As for the black man, he 
must disappear with the years. Dependent like 
the ivy, he needs some strong oak-like friend to 
cling to. His support has been cut from him, and 
his life must wither in its prostrate helplessness. 
Will he leave no trace of his past in the fields 
made fertile by his mighty labors, no memory 
of his presence in this fair land he made rich in 
vain ? Ah,yes ! the echo of the sweetly melancholy 
songs of slavery, — the weird and beautiful melo- 
dies born in the hearts of the poor, childlike peo- 
ple to whom freedom was destruction." 

By the time he sent his next letter, dated 
December 10, 1877, he had again been wander- 
ing about the city. He visited the old Spanish 
cathedral founded by Don Andre Almonaster, 
Regidor and Alferez Real of his Most Catholic 
Majesty. This is the church that is always re- 
ferred to as the "French cathedral/ ' Hearn de- 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 169 

scribed its two ancient tombs, — that of Almon- 
aster, who died in 1708, and then that of the 
French noble family of De Marigny de Mande- 
ville, scions of which died and were buried there 
in 1728, 1779, and 1800. Hearn had his own 
reflections over the matter just as Irving had in 
Westminster Abbey: 

a O Knights of the Ancient Regime, the feet 
of the plebeians are blotting out your escutch- 
eons; the overthrowers of throned Powers pass 
by your tombs with a smile of complacency ; the 
callous knees of the poorest poor will erelong 
obliterate your carven memory from the stone; 
the very places of your dwelling have crumbled 
out of sight and out of remembrance. The glory 
of Versailles has passed away; c the spider taketh 
hold with his hands, and is in the palaces of 
Kings. ,,, 

From musings in the cathedral he passed in- 
to a disquisition on language. He held that the 
French tongue sounded better to him from the 
mouth of a negro than did the harsher English. 
Southern speech flows melodiously from the ne- 
gro's lips, being musically akin to the many-vow- 
elled languages of Africa. The th's and thr's, the 
difficult diphthongs and guttural rr's of Eng- 



170 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

lish and German, have a certain rude Northern 
strength beyond the mastery of Ethiopian lips. 
He finds that the Louisiana blacks speak a cor- 
rupted French, often called " Creole," which is 
not the Creole of the Antilles. This recalls to him 
a memory of his childhood in England and gives 
also a foretaste of what he was to do ten years 
later, when H arpers gave him a chance to describe 
what he felt and saw in the French West Indies: 
"Yesterday evening, the first time for ten 
years, I heard again that sweetest of all dialects, 
the Creole of the Antilles. I had first heard it 
spoken in England by the children of an Eng- 
lish family from Trinidad, who were visiting re- 
latives in the mother country, and I could never 
forget its melody. In Martinique and elsewhere 
it has almost a written dialect; the school-children 
used to study the c Creole catechism/ and priests 
used to preach to their congregations in Creole. 
You cannot help falling in love with it after hav- 
ing once heard it spoken by young lips, unless 
indeed you have no poetry in your composition, 
no music in your soul. It is the most liquid, mel- 
low, languid language in the world. It is espe- 
cially a language for love-making. It sounds like 
pretty baby-talk ; it woos like the cooing of a 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 171 

dove. It seems to be a mixture of French, a little 
Spanish, and West African dialects, — those ne- 
gro dialects that are voluminous with vowels. 
You can imagine how smooth it is from the fact 
that in West Indian Creole the letter r is never 
pronounced; and the Europeans of the Indies 
complain that once their children have learned 
to speak Creole, it is hard to teach them to pro- 
nounce any other language correctly. They will 
say 'b'ed' for bread and £ t'ed' for thread. So that 
it is a sort of wopsy-popsy-ootsy-tootsy lan- 
guage." 

And from this affectionate passage he is led to 
speak of Creole satires. During the Republican 
regime in New Orleans after the Civil War there 
was a witty, bitter, and brilliant French paper 
called Le Carillon, which designated Republicans 
by a new term," Radicanailles," which seemed ex- 
ceedingly satisfying to the proud aristocracy, — 
this word compounded of "radical" and "ca- 
naille" The paper used to print Creole satires. 
One was on ex-Governor Antoine, in the form 
of a parody upon "La Fille de Madame An- 
got." Now Hearn's ambition was to write a sinu- 
ous, silvern, poetical prose. He rarely attempted 
verse. In his better known books on Japan his 



172 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

versions of Japanese songs and poems are in 
prose. So, too, in these letters all his renderings 
of the things that attracted him are in prose. 
Here is his version of the satire just mentioned, 
redolent as it is of an era of bitterness: 



"In the old days before the war, I was a slave 
at Caddo [Parish] . I tilled the earth and raised 
sweet potatoes and water-melons. Then after- 
wards I left the plough and took up the razor 
to shave folks in the street, — white and black, 
too. But that, that was before the war. 

ii 

"When Banks went up the river (Red River) 
with soldiers and with cannon, I changed my 
career. Then I became a runaway slave. I mar- 
ried my own cousin, who is at this hour my wife. 
She — she attended to the kitchen. I — I sought 
for honors. But that, that was during the war. 

in 

"And then afterward in the custom-house men 
called me Collector; and then Louisiana named 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 173 

me her Senator; and then to show her confidence 
the people made me Governor and called me His 
Eminence; and that is what I am at this present 
hour. And that, that is since the war." 

From this, with the inconsequential air of a but- 
terfly, he turned to the subject of the Greeks of 
New Orleans, — a subjecl that must have lain near 
to his heart by reason of the deep love he bore 
for his Greek mother. Among the New Orleans 
people he mentioned was one Greek gentleman: 
" I never met a finer old man. Though more than 
seventy years of age, his face was still as firmly 
outlined, as clearly cut, as an antique cameo; its 
traits recalled memories of old marbles, portraits 
in stone of Aristophanes and Sophocles; it be- 
spoke a grand blending of cynicism and poetry." 
But the sons of Hellas were not all alike sat- 
isfactory to his fastidious taste: "There are many 
Greeks, sailors and laborers, in New Orleans; but 
I cannot say that they inspire one with dreams 
of Athens or of Corinth, of Panathenaic proces- 
sions or Panhellenic games. Their faces are not 
numismatic; their forms are not athletic. Some- 
times you can discern a something national about 
a Greek steamboatman, — a something charac- 



174 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

teristic which distinguishes him from the equally 
swarthy Italian, Spaniard/ Dago.' But that some- 
thing is not of antiquity; it is not inspirational. 
It is Byzantine, and one is apt to dislike it. It re- 
minds one of Taine's merciless criticism of the 
faces of Byzantine art. But I have seen a few rare 
Hellenic types here, and amongthese some beau- 
tiful Romaic girls, — maidens with faces to remind 
you of the gracious vase paintings of antiquity/' 
One would think he had crammed this letter full 
enough of topics, but he had one more. Through- 
out his life ghost stories were an obsession with 
him. They run all through his books on Japan. 
Three decades ago he lamented: "In these days 
ghosts have almost lost the power to interest us, 
forwe have become too familiarwith their cloudy 
faces, and familiarity begetteth contempt. An ori- 
ginal ghost story is a luxury, and a rare luxury 
at that." 

He then toldof a house on Melpomene Street, 
New Orleans, in which no one could dwell in 
peace. If a person were so hardy and so skepti- 
cal as to move in, he soon found his furniture 
scattered, and his carpets torn up by invisible 
hands. Ghostly feet shook the house with their 
terrible steps; ghostly hands opened bolted doors 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 175 

as if locks did not exist, — so that by and by no 
one came to live in the old place any more: 

"As the years flitted by the goblin of Decay 
added himself to the number of the Haunters; 
the walls crumbled, and the floors yielded, and 
grass, livid and ghastly looking grass, forced its 
pale way between the chinks of the planks in the 
parlor., The windows fell into ruin, and the wind 
entered freely to play with the ghosts, and cried 
weirdly in the vacant room." 

Then one night Chief of Police Leary and six 
of his most stalwart men determined to stand 
watch in the building and solve the mystery. 
They placed candles in one of the rooms, and 
towards midnight stood in a hollow square, with 
Chief Leary in the middle, so that he could aid 
his men to repel an attack from any quarter what- 
soever. The ghosts blew out the lighted candles 
and, to this extent, were commonplace enough. 
But the next instant they displayed their com- 
plete ingenuity and originality by seizing the 
seven guardians of the peace and hurling them 
violently against the ceiling. Hearn adds, with a 
touch of playful humor: "The city of New Or- 
leans would not pay the doctors' bills of men in- 
jured while in the discharge of their duty." 



176 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

By December 17, 1877, he had become inter- 
ested in the past and present of " Los Criollos," 
the Creoles, who were to be such a fascinating 
subject to him when he visited Martinique and 
other enchanted isles of the Caribbean. 

In this first letter on the subject he corrected 
the common error of speaking of mulattoes, 
quadroons, and octaroons of Louisiana as Cre- 
oles, — a mistake which curiously enough he him- 
self made in his book, "Ghombo Zhebes," sev- 
eral years later. In this letter, however, he cor- 
rectly pointed out that no person with the slight- 
est taint of negro blood was a Creole, and that 
the common mistake was made not only in the 
North, but also often in the South, where they 
should know better; not only in America, but 
also in England, France, and Spain, the former 
mother countries of all the West Indian colo- 
nists. " Creole/' properly speaking, is the term ap- 
plied to the pure-blooded offspring of Europeans 
born in the colonies of South America or the 
West Indies, to distinguish them from children 
of mixed blood born in the colonies or of pure 
blood born in the mother country. In Louisiana, 
he pointed out that it usually meant they were of 
French, more rarely of Spanish, descent. He paid 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 177 

a tribute to the Creole society of New Orleans 
which was made up of the descendants of all the 
early European settlers: "Something of all that 
was noble and true and brilliant in the almost 
forgotten life of the dead South lives here still 
(its atmosphere is European; its tastes are gov- 
erned by European literature and the art culture 
of the Old World). " Hethen quoted some of the 
poems in the patois of Louisiana and also some 
from Martinique that he had already picked up. 

On December 22 he devoted his attention to 
"New Orleans in Wet Weather." He had much to 
say of its dampness and chills and fogs: "Strange 
it is to observe the approach of one of these eerie 
fogs on some fair night. The blue deeps above 
glow tenderly beyond the sharp crescent of the 
moon; the heavens seem transformed to an in- 
finite ocean of liquid turquoise, made living with 
the palpitating life of the throbbing stars. In this 
limpid clearness, this yellow, tropical moonlight, 
objects are plainly visible at a distance of miles; far 
sounds come to the ear with marvellous distinct- 
ness, — the clarion calls of the boats, the long, loud 
panting of the cotton-presses, exhaling steaming 
breath from their tireless lungs of steel. 

" Suddenly sounds become fainter and fainter, 



178 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

as though the atmosphere were madefeeble byun- 
accountable enchantment ; distant objects lose dis- 
tinctness; the heaven is cloudless, but her lights, 
low-burning and dim, no longer make the night 
transparent, and a chill falls upon the city, such 
as augurs the coming of a ghost. Then the ghost 
appears; the invisible makes itself visible; a vast 
form of thin white mist seems to clasp the whole 
night in its deathly embrace; the face of the moon 
is hidden as with a grey veil, and the spectral fog 
extinguishes with its chill breath the trembling 
flames of the stars." 

^Turning his thought to grave matters, he re- 
fers to the elevated tombs in the cemeteries, which 
some irreverently call "bake ovens." Then comes 
a touch of the playful, familiar enough to those 
who read the present volume, but rarein his other 
books: " Fancy being asked by a sexton whether 
you wished to have the remains of your wife or 
child deposited in c one of them bake ovens. ,,: 

Again, with a swift turn of thought and sub- 
ject, as if in conversation with a friend or as if in 
a letter to him, he reverts to "Beast Ben Butler" 
and his needless brutality in having carved on one 
of the New Orleans statues, Clay's declaration 
against slavery and Andrew Jackson's famous 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 179 

saying," Our federal Union :itmust be preserved." 
The sight of Levantine sailors selling fruit in the 
markets caused him to rhapsodize on the sea, 
giving the first of those prose poems in which he 
was to wax almost lyrical in so many of his works: 
"If you, O reader, chance to be a child of the 
sea; if, in earliest childhood, you listened each 
morning and evening to that most ancient and 
mystic hymn-chant of the waves, which none can 
hear without awe, and which no musician can 
learn; if you have ever watched wonderingly the 
far sails of the fishing vessels turn rosy in the 
blush of the sunset, or silver under the moon, or 
golden in the glow of sunrise; if you once breathed 
as your native air the divine breath of the ocean, 
and learned the swimmer's art from the hoary 
breakers, and received the Ocean god's christen- 
ing, the glorious baptism of salt, — then per- 
haps you know only too well why those sailors 
of the Levant cannot seek homes within the 
heart of the land. Twenty years may have passed 
since your ears last caught the thunder of that 
mighty ode of hexameters which the sea has al- 
ways sung and will sing forever, — since your 
eyes sought the far line where the vaulted blue 
of heaven touches the level immensity of rolling 



180 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

waters, — since you breathed the breath of the 
ocean, and felt its clear ozone living in your veins 
like an elixir. Have you forgotten the mighty 
measure of that mighty song? Have you forgot- 
ten the divine saltiness of that unfettered wind? Is 
not the spell of the sea strong upon you still? . . . 

"And I think that the Levantine sailors dare 
not dwell in the midst of the land, for fear lest 
dreams of a shadowy sea might come upon them 
in the night, and phantom winds call wildly to 
them in their sleep, and they might wake to find 
themselves a thousand miles beyond the voice 
of the breakers." 

On December 27, 1877, already deeply inter- 
ested in the niceties of language, Hearn gave his 
Cincinnati readers a dissertation upon the curi- 
osities of Creole grammar, and quoted in Creole 
a weird love-song, said to be of negro origin. He 
doubted whether it was really composed by a ne- 
gro, but remarked that its spirit was undoubtedly 
African. Then he gave the following prose ver- 
sion of this exotic: 

" Since first I beheld you, Adele, 
While dancing the calinda^ 
I have remained faithful to the thought of you ; 
My freedom has departed from me y 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 181 

/ care no longer for all other negr esses; 
I have no heart left for the?n; — 
You have such grace and cunning : — 
You are like the Congo serpent. 

u I love you too much, my beautiful one: — 
/ am not able to help it. 

My heart has become just like a grasshopper, — 
It does nothing but leap. 
I have never met any woman 
Who has so beautiful a form as yours. 
Your eyes flash flame; 
Your body has enchained me captive, 

a Ah, you are so like the serpent-of-the-rattles 
Who knows how to charm the little bird, 
And who has a mouth ever ready for it 
To serve it for a tomb. 
I have never known any negress 
Who could walk with such grace as you can. 
Or who could make such beautiful gestures; 
Your body is a beautiful doll. 

"When I cannot see you, Adele, 
I feel myself ready to die; 
My life becomes like a candle 
Which has almost burned itself out. 
I cannot then find anything in the world 
Which is able to give me pleasure : — 



1 82 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

/ could well go down to the river 

And throw myself in it that I might cease to suffer. 

" Tell me if you have a man. 
And I will make an ouanga charm for him: 
I will make him turn into a phantom^ 
If you will only take me for your husband. 
I will not go to see you when you are cross; 
Other women are mere trash to me; 
I will make you very happy 
And I will give you a beautiful Madras handkerchief" 

He freely admitted that the poem was untrans- 
latable, that it lost its weird beauty, its melody, 
its liquid softness, its languor, when put into Eng- 
lish. Then came a characteristic bit in which he 
displayed the man who dwelt with delight upon 
the inner meaning of words, — the delight felt 
only by the artist in language: "I think there is 
some true poetry in these allusions to the snake. 
Is not the serpent a symbol of grace? Is not the 
so-called' line of beauty' serpentine? And is there 
not something of the serpent in the beauty of all 
graceful women ?somethingof undulating shape- 
liness, something of silent fascination? something 
of Lilith and Lamia? The French have a beau- 
tiful verb expressive of this idea, — serpenter, c to 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 183 

serpent/ to curve in changing undulations like 
a lithe snake. The French artist speaks of the 
outlines of a beautiful human body as 'serpent- 
ing,' curving and winding like a serpent. Do you 
not like the word? I think it is so expressive of 
flowinglines of elegance, — so fullofthat mystery 
of grace which puzzled Solomon: 'the way of a 
serpent upon a rock.'" 

r On January 7, 1 878, came a picture in prose, 
which now reminds us of William Ernest Hen- 
ley's "London Voluntary," in which the latter 
described the splendor of a golden October day 
in the metropolis of the world. Here is Christmas 
EveinNewOrleans: "Christmas Eve camein with 
a blaze of orange glory in the west, and masses of 
lemon-colored clouds piled up above the sunset. 
The whole city was filled with orange-colored light, 
just before the sun went down; and between the 
lemon-hued clouds and the blue were faint tints 
of green. The colors of that sunset seemed a fairy 
mockery of the colors of the fruit booths through- 
out the city; where the golden fruit lay piled up in 
luxuriant heaps, and where the awnings of white 
canvas had been replaced by long archways of 
interwoven orange branches with the fruit still 
glowinguponthem. Itwas an Orange Christmas." 



1 84 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

Then at nightfall he passed the French opera 
house on Bourbon Street. It was "dark and dead 
and silent," and as a matter of course the dreamer 
had another vision: "Sometimes, when passing 
under the sharply cut shadows of the building 
in a night of tropical moonlight, I fancy that 
a shadowy performance of c Don Giovanni' or 
'Masaniello' must be going on within for the en- 
tertainment of a ghostly audience; and that if 
somebody would but open the doors an instant, 
one might catch a glimpse of spectral splendor, 
of dusky-eyed beauties long dead, — of forgot- 
ten faces pale with the sleep of battlefields, — of 
silks that should be mouldering in mouldering 
chests with the fashions of twenty years ago." 

And finally this letter contained the following 
prophetic utterance concerning the new South, — 
the South then not yet in existence, the South 
that so nearly approximates what Hearn said it 
would be :"Itis the picturesqueness of the South, 
the poetry, the traditions, the legends, the su- 
perstitions, the quaint faiths, the family prides, 
the luxuriousness, the splendid indolence and 
the splendid sins of the old social system which 
have passed, or which are now passing, away for- 
ever The new South may, perhaps, become 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 185 

far richer than the old South; but there will be 
no aristocracy, no lives of unbridled luxury, no 
reckless splendors of hospitality, no mad pursuit 
of costliest pleasures. The old hospitality has 
been starved to death, and leaves no trace of its 
former being save the thin ghost of a romance. 
The new South will be less magnificent, though 
wealthier; less generous, though more self-deny- 
ing; less poetical, though more cultured. The 
new cities will be, probably, more prosperous and 
less picturesque than the old." 

January 14, 1878, Hearn devoted his entire let- 
ter to W. C. C.Claiborne, the first American gov- 
ernor of Louisiana. He told in what hostile manner 
the American was received by the haughty Creole 
gentry, and how he was alleged to have worn his 
hat at the theatre. It is in the comment on this 
that Hearn most amusingly displays himselfas an 
Englishman, with the dim-seeing eyes of a Dick- 
ens or a saucy Kipling rather than the clear-head- 
ed, clear-eyed American, or the adopted citizen, 
understanding this country and its people: "I 
fancy that wearing of the hat before those terribly 
cultivated and excruciatingly courteous Creole au- 
diences must have been at first a mere oversight; 
but that poor Claiborne naturally got stubborn 



1 86 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

when such an outcry was raised about it and, 
with an angry pride of manhood peculiar to good 
American blood, swore c by the Eternal' that he 
would wear his hat wherever he pleased. Don't 
you almost wish you could slap him on the shoul- 
der with that truly American slap of approba- 
tion? "Of course that is pure Dickens, the Dick- 
ens of "American Notes," just as is the follow- 
ing rather amusingdescription of American news- 
papers in the good years 1804, 1805, and 1806: 
cc In those days the newspaper seems to have been 
neither more nor less than a public spittoon, — 
every man flung his quid of private opinion into 
it." 

Hearn went to look at the Claiborne graves 
in the old St. Louis cemetery on Basin Street. 
Throughout his life graveyards seemed to have 
a fascination for him; but the following descrip- 
tion of the St. Louis cemetery is interesting be- 
cause it proves, what has often been denied, that 
part of Hearn's boyhood was spent in Wales: 
"This cemetery is one of the most curious, andat 
the same time one of the most dilapidated, in the 
world. I have seen old graveyards in the north 
of England, and tombs in Wales, where names 
of the dead of three hundred years ago may yet 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 187 

be read upon the mossy stones; but I have never 
seen so grim a necropolis as the ruined Creole 
cemetery at New Orleans. There is no order 
there, no regularity, no long piles of white obe- 
lisks, no even ranks of grey tablets. The tombs 
seem to jostle one another; the graveyard is a 
labyrinth in which one may easily lose oneself. 
Some of the tombs are Roman in size and design; 
some are mere heaps of broken brick; some are 
of the old-fashioned table form. ,, 

Readers of Hearn's books are familiar with 
those pages in which he speaks of Japanese fe- 
male names, and studies appellations in general. 
This fancy was no new thing with him. As long 
ago as February 1 8, 1 878, he studied the curious 
nomenclature of New Orleans streets, revealing, 
as it does, part of the history of the city, some- 
thing of its old gallant life, something of its old 
classical culture. He told how Burgundy Street 
was named after the great duke; Dauphine is, of 
course, self-explanatory, as are Louis XV and 
Royal and Bourbon. Governors are represented 
by Carondelet, Galvez, and others; French and 
Spanish piety, by such names as St. Bartholomy, 
St. Charles, and Annunciata. The classicism, 
which so affedled the traditions of French poetry 



188 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

and the French stage, is here represented by 
streets named Calliope, Clio, Dry ades, &c. Gallan- 
try, " often wicked gallantry, I fear," is commemo- 
rated by a number of streets christened with " the 
sweetest and prettiest feminine names imagin- 
able, — Adele, Celeste, Suzette, and Annette." 

Then he gave his readers some more of those 
Creole songs he was always collecting, some of 
which as rich treasure he was afterwards to give 
to his friend, Mr. H. E. Krehbiel, the musical 
critic. In this letter he told how, when for the first 
time he read Daudet's novel, translated under the 
title of "Sidonie,"he was charmed with the re- 
frain of a Creole song, and determined, when in 
New Orleans, to procure the whole poem. He 
recorded his disappointment in being able only 
to get one stanza, which he translated as follows : 

" Others say it is your happiness; 
I say, it is your sorrow : 
When we are enchanted by love, 
Farewell to all happiness ! 
Poor little Miss Zizif 
Poor little Miss Zizif 
Poor little Miss Zizif 
She has sorrow, sorrow, sorrow; — 
She has sorrow in her heart /" 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 189 

Here is another bit, which seems to the Anglo- 
Saxon very uncouth and unpoetical when given 
in bare, bald English, robbed of the oft-lisping 
Creole melody : 

"If thou wert a little bird, 
And I were a little gun, 
I would shoot thee — bang! 
Ah, dear little 
AAahogany jewel, 
I love thee as a little pig loves the mud" 

The next is more charming. It is only a snatch, 
but it hints delicious romance: 

" Delaide, my queen, the way is too long for me to travel; — 

That way leads far up yonder. 

But, little as I am, I am going to stem the stream up there. 

' I, Liron, am come,'' is what I shall say to them, 

c My queen, good night; "'tis I, Liron, who have come?" 

And finally there is this one, evidently of negro 
origin, made to ridicule a mulatto girl named 
Toucouton, who tried to pass as white: 

a Ah, Toucouton! 
I know you well: 
Tou are like a blackamoor; 
There is no soap 
Which is white enough 
To wash your skin. 



190 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

"When the white folks give a ball, 
You are not able to go there ; 
Ah, how will you be able to play the flirt! 
Tou who so love to shine? 
Ah) Toucouton, &c. 

" Once you used to take a seat 
Among the fashionable people ; 
Now you must take leave, decamp. 
Without any delay whatever. 
Ah, Toucouton" &c. 

We have seen that all these letters by Hearn 
were as if written for his own pleasure or for the 
pleasure of a friend, but decidedly not for a news- 
paper clientele. After the " news "just referred to, 
there followed two letters which would seem to 
indicate that the patient editor besought his cor- 
respondent to come nearer to hard, prosaic news 
matters and treat of the turmoil of Louisiana 
state affairs. Accordingly, on March 24, 1878, 
there was a screed on "Louisiana as It Is," treat- 
ing of the political questions, and finally another, 
on March 31, scouting the possibility of forming 
a Hayes party in Louisiana. These letters were 
written in so half-hearted a way that it was not 
at all surprising to see the next letter from New 
Orleans signed by a new and more ordinary name. 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 191 

Hearn was no longer the representative of the 
paper. He went on record to the effect that he 
quit because the paper was slow about paying him 
money, although he demanded the arrears time 
and time again. The chances are that the Com- 
mercial* s readers stupidly wanted more about 
politics and less about Creole love poetry. With 
the close of this correspondence Hearn thus de- 
finitely closed all connection with the Cincinnati 
newspaper world. 

We have seen now, from the Midwinter let- 
ters, how the Hearn of New Orleans was the 
father of the Hearn of the West Indies and of 
Japan. Indeed, so far as his work was concerned, 
the same subjects interested him throughout his 
life. This is not to say that he remained at a 
standstill. On the contrary, he was constantly 
growing. Despite his bad eyesight, he read inces- 
santly, and his reading took a very wide range. 
He labored to perfect: his style. He struggled 
with words; he used the file after a fashion to 
remind one of what Flaubert and Stevenson 
have told us of themselves. But with a very wise 
knowledge of his own sympathies and limita- 
tions, he chose exactly the topics for his pen that 



192 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

could most surely stir his imagination. It is a 
little singular, some seven years after his letters 
to the Cincinnati newspaper, to find him writing 
practically the same kind of articles and on the 
same subjects for Harper's Weekly. Hearn, then 
at the age of thirty-five, anxious to have his 
things appear in some publication with a circu- 
lation other than purely local, and anxious like- 
wise to eke out his slender income, managed to 
secure a commission from the houae of Harper. 
The firm had sent a staff artist to New Orleans to 
draw sketches of the exposition of 1885. Hearn 
was to supply the descriptive articles. His first 
appeared in Harper' 's Weekly of January 3, 1885, 
and was a straightforward account of the expo- 
sition. Of course with a man of Hearn's tempera- 
ment this could not last long, so it is not surpris- 
ing to see the next letter, which appeared on 
January 10, 1885, devoted to "The Creole Pa- 
tois. 

"Although," he writes, "the pure Creole ele- 
ment is disappearing from the c Vie Faubon,' as 
Creole children call the antiquated part of New 
Orleans, it is there, nevertheless, that the patois 
survives as a current idiom ; it is there one must 
dwell to hear it spoken in its purity and to study 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 193 

its peculiarities of intonation and construction. 
The patois-speakinginhabitants, dwelling mostly 
in those portions of the quadrilateral furthest from 
the river and from the broad American bound- 
ary of Canal Street, — which many of them never 
cross when they can help it, — are not less bizarre 
than the architectural background of their pic- 
turesque existence. The visitor is surrounded by 
a life motley-colored as those fantastic popula- 
tions described in the Story of the Young King 
of the Black Isles; the African ebon is least 
visible, but of bronze browns, banana yellows, 
orange golds, there are endless varieties, paling 
off into faint lemon tints and even dead silver 
whites. The paler the shade, the more strongly 
do Latin characteristics show themselves; and the 
oval faces, with slender cheeks and low, broad 
brows, prevail. Sometimes in the yellower types a 
curious Sphinx visage appears, dreamy as Egypt. 
Occasionally also one may encounter figures so 
lithe, so animal, as to recall the savage grace of 
Piou's 'Satyress.' For the true colorist the con- 
trast of a light saffron skin with dead black hair 
and eyes of liquid jet has a novel charm, as of 
those descriptions in the Malay poem, c Bida- 
sari,' of 'women like statues of gold/ It is hard 



194 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

to persuade oneself that such types do not be- 
long to one distinct race, the remnant of some 
ancient island tribe, and the sound of their richly 
vowelled Creole speech might prolong the plea- 
sant illusion. " 

Happening to mention an octoroon, the very 
term starts him on a rhapsody: 

"That word reminds one of a celebrated and 
vanished type, — never mirrored upon canvas, yet 
not less physically worthy of artistic preservation 
than those amber-tinted beauties glorified in the 
Oriental studies of I ngres, of Richter, of Gerome ! 
Uncommonly tall were those famous beauties, 
citrine-hued, elegant of stature as palmettoes, 
lithe as serpents; never again will such types re- 
appear upon American soil. Daughters of luxury, 
artificial human growths, never organized to enter 
the iron struggle for life unassisted and unpro- 
tected, they vanished forever with the social sys- 
tem which made them a place apart as for splendid 
plants reared within a conservatory. With the fall 
of American feudalism the dainty glass house was 
dashed to pieces; the species it contained have 
perished utterly ; and whatever morality may have 
gained, one cannot help thinking that art has 
lost something by their extinction. What figures 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 195 

for designs in bronze! What tints for canvas!" 
Then Hearn returns to the subject of the Cre- 
oles, and speaks of the compilation of Creole 
proverbs of the Antilles and other places, but of 
the lack of a similar work in Louisiana. It fore- 
shadowed his own "Ghombo Zhebes," then in 
the making. Reading his description of the fu- 
gitive Creole literature, one regrets that Hearn 
did not find time and opportunity to collect it 
as he did the proverbs. 

"TheineditedCreoleliterature,"sayshe,"com- 
prised songs, satires in rhyme, proverbs, fairy 
tales, — almost everything commonly included 
under the term of folk-lore. The lyrical portion of 
it is opulent in oddities, in melancholy beauties; 
Alphonse Daudet has frequently borrowed there- 
from, using Creole refrains in his novels with 
admirable effect. Some of the popular songs pos- 
sess a unique and almost weird pathos; there is 
a strange, naive sorrow in their burdens, as of 
children sobbing for lonesomeness in the night. 
Others, on the contrary, are inimitably comical. 
There are many ditties or ballads devoted to epi- 
sodes of old plantation life, to surreptitious frolic, 
to description of singular industries and callings, 
to commemoration of events which had strongly 



196 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

impressed the vivid imagination of negroes, — a 
circus show, an unexpected holiday, the visit of 
a beautiful stranger to the planter's home, or even 
some one of those incidents indelibly marked 
with a crimson spatter upon the fierce history of 
Louisiana politics. " 

On January 17, under the same caption, Hearn 
continued the subject, giving some of the songs 
and speaking of their probable African ancestry. 

On January 31, once more under the general 
title of "The New Orleans Exposition," Hearn 
turns with avidity to musings on the Japanese 
exhibit. Right in the beginning we have this on 
art, remarkable,as so much of Hearn's work was, 
for a vivid sense of color and form despite his 
own difficulty in seeing: "What Japanese art of 
the best era is unrivalled in — that characteristic 
in which, according even to the confession of the 
best French art connoisseurs, it excels all other 
art — is movement, the rhythm, the poetry of visi- 
ble motion. Great masters of the antique Japanese 
schools have been known to devote a whole life- 
time to the depiction of one kind of bird, one 
variety of insect or reptile, alone. This speciali- 
zation of art, as Ary Renan admirably showed us 
in a recent essay, produced results that no Euro- 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 197 

pean master has ever been able to approach. A 
flight of gulls sweeping through the gold light 
of a summer morning; a long line of cranes sail- 
ing against a vermilion sky; a swallow twirling 
its kite shape against the disk of the sun; the 
heavy, eccentric, velvety flight of bats under the 
moon; the fairy hoverings of moths or splen- 
did butterflies, — these are subjects the Japanese 
brush has rendered with a sublimity of realism 
which might be imitated, perhaps, but never sur- 
passed. Except in the statues of gods or goddesses 
(Buddhas which almost compel the Christian to 
share the religious awe of their worshippers, or 
those charming virgins of the Japanese heaven, 
c slenderly supple as a beautiful lily'), the Japa- 
nese have been far from successful in delineation 
of the human figure. But their sculpture or paint- 
ing of animal forms amazes by its grace; their 
bronze tortoises, crabs, storks, frogs, are not mere 
copies of nature: they are exquisite idealizations 
of it." 

Almost every paragraph seems to foreshadow 
some chapter in some one of Hearn's future 
books on Japan. With a memory of his papers 
on Japanese insects, this, written in 1885, is sig- 
nificant: 



198 Letters of Ozias Midwinter 

"Perhaps it is bad taste on the writer's part, 
but the bugs and reptiles in cotton attracted his 
attention even more than the cranes. You see a 
Japanese tray covered with what appear to be 
dead and living bugs and beetles, — some appar- 
ently about to fly away; others with upturned 
abdomen, legs shrunk up, antennae inert. They 
are so life-like that you may actually weigh one 
in your hand a moment before you find that it 
is made of cotton. Everything, even to the joints 
of legs or abdomen, is exquisitely imitated : the 
metallic lustre of the beetle's armor is reproduced 
by a bronze varnish. There are cotton crickets 
with the lustre of lacquer, and cotton grasshop- 
pers of many colors: the korogi, whose singing 
is like to the sound of a weaver, weaving rapidly 
( c ko-ro-ru, ko-ro-ru'), and the kirigisi, whose 
name is an imitation of its own note." 

Or again, remembering his masterly descrip- 
tion of an ascent of the famous Japanese moun- 
tain, read this, written long before he had ever 
seen it in the reality : £C Splendid silks were hang- 
ing up everywhere, some exquisitely embroid- 
ered with attractive compositions, figures, land- 
scapes, and especially views of Fusiyama, the 
matchless mountain, whose crater edges are 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 199 

shaped like the eight petals of the Sacred Lotos; 
Fusiyama, of which the great artist Houkousai 
alone drew one hundred different views; Fusi- 
yama, whose snows may only be compared for 
pearly beauty to c the white teeth of a young girl/ 
and whose summit magically changes its tints 
through the numberless variations of light. 
Everywhere it appears, — the wonderful moun- 
tain, — on fans, behind rains of gold, or athwart a 
furnace light of sunset, or against an immaculate 
blue, or gold burnished by some wizard dawn; 
in bronze, exhaling from its mimic crater a pillar 
of incense smoke; on porcelain, towering above 
stretches of vineyard and city-speckled plains, or 
perchance begirdled by a rich cloud sash of 
silky, shifting tints, like some beauty of Yosi- 
wara." 

At this period in his life there was not only a 
love of Creole folk-lore and a longing for Japan, 
but a very decided and deep interest in things 
Chinese. Not only was Hearn preparing himself 
for the writing of "Some Chinese Ghosts," but 
it is altogether probable that his dreams of a 
trip to Asia contemplated a sojourn in China as 
well as in Japan. The daintiness, the fairy-like 
beauty of the Island Empire won him, and China 



200 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 



lost its chance for interpretation by a master. 
However, in his letter of March 7, 1.885, telling 
of " The East at New Orleans," we find this rela- 
tive to China: 

"At either side of the main entrance is a great 
vase, carved from lips to base with complex de- 
signs in partial relief and enamelled in divers 
colors. In general effect of coloration the display- 
is strictly Chinese; the dominating tone is yel- 
low, — bright yellow, the sacred and cosmogonic 
color according to Chinese belief. When the Mas- 
ter of Heaven deigns to write, He writes with 
yellow ink only, save when He takes the light- 
ning for His brush to trace a white sentence of 
destruction. So at least we are told in the book 
called Kan-ing p'ien, — the 'Book of Rewards 
and Punishments/ which further describes the 
writing of God as being in tchouen, — those an- 
tique 'seal-characters' now rarely seen except in 
jewel engraving, signatures stamped on works 
of art, or inscriptions upon monuments, — those 
primitive ideographic characters dating back per- 
haps to that age of which we have no historic 
record, but of which Chinese architecture, with 
its strange peaks and curves, offers us more than 
a suggestion, — the great Nomad Era." 



Letters of Ozias Midwinter 201 

There were only two more of Hearn's letters 
on the exposition, one on March 14, on Mexico 
at New Orleans, telling of the wax figures, de- 
picting various Mexican types, and describing 
the feather-work, imitated from that of the Az- 
tecs; the other, appearing April 11, 1885, telling 
of the government exhibit. On November 7 he 
wound up his letters for Harper s by telling some- 
thing about "The Last of the Voudoos," — Jean 
Montanet, or Voudoo John, or Bayou John, who 
had just died in New Orleans. 

On March 28 and April 4 there appeared in 
Harper's Bazar, some "Notes of a Curiosity 
Hunter," in which he described some of the 
things that interested him most in the Japanese 
and Mexican exhibits. 

The End 



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